I had a great time in London. I was surprised by the number of people showing up, despite the late announcement. The venue was great, two rooms of appropriate size, and equipment that just worked. There wasn't a (wireless) network available, and I think that that was just great. Organizers, take notice: it's much nicer to present to a room where people look at you, instead of hiding behind the lids of laptops, tapping away at their computers.
I flew in on Saturday morning, arriving at 7 AM London time. My flight left at 7 AM as well (but 7 AM MET), which met that the alarm went at 4.30 AM - 3.30 AM London time. It's doable, but next year, I certainly consider flying in on Friday. Anyway, there was a convenient train from Gatwick airport to Farringdon station. A 45 minute ride with trains going every 15 minutes, followed by a 10 minute walk. I arrived at the venue about a quarter to nine - only person who was already there was Josette from O'Reilly. But by 10, it was crowded and we could start. After some introduction, the real talks could start, and I had the honour of doing the first talk in the advanced track, about Regexp::Common.
I'm sure that in the room next to us, people were doing experiments with large masses, contracting my time as Simon came in to tell indicating my time was nearly up. And I was only halfway through my slides! Following my talk, there was one about Parrot, but I missed half of it, getting some coffee and something to eat. After the Parrot talk, it was my turn again, to entertain the audience with tales about my 10 year struggle with Perl objects. I had a bit more time than 45 minutes (still not enough, two hours would have been better) as Jos was up after me, but after staying in the pub till 1 AM the night before, he now called claiming to have the flu, so he couldn't speak (the flu was gone later that day in the pub...). Jos's slot was filled with a talk by Mark, doing some live demos.
At lunch time, I went to a nearby pub with Nicolas, Smylers, Aaron and a few others. "Food served all day" was being advertized, but all they had were rolls that tasted if they were at least a day old.
After lunch I saw two interesting talks, one about using OpenGL in your Perl program - the other about using attributes, by Casey West. I've never used OpenGL before, and I've hardly ever used attributes, and these talks made me interested in trying.
At the end of the afternoon, there was a talk by Mark Jason Dominus - an hour and a half of his Red flags lessons. Very interesting and entertaining - it's always a pleasure to listen to Mark Jason.
After the conference most of us went to a nearby pub for drinks - Fotango donated some money. Afterwards, a group of us (Greg, Leon, Mark-Jason, Clkao, Jos and his fiancee, Ben, ??? and myself) went to an excellent Japanese restaurant for dinner.
Having finished dinner, Greg and I took a cab to Greg's home, were I spend the night. On Sunday morning, Greg and his wife dropped me off at the train station, from where I took a train back to the airport. Check-in, a quick visit to a book store to grab some books, and it was time to fly back to the Netherlands, just in time for a birtday lunch of a good friend.
All-in-all, a well spend Saturday. Simon, thanks for the wonderful workshop. Hopefully, there will be one next year as well.
No wireless in room? What a pleasant thought. Admittedly, I've used it before as both participant and presenter, but I think it would be nice to "kick out the wireless". So many people treat these things as social gatherings and tend to ignore the talks.
