Yesterday was the first day of the real conference, with the first keynotes by Cisco and Morgan Stanley. The latter was by far the most fun, as he was clearly someone who had hacked open source code and knew the problems with deploying open source across large, widely distributed locations. His point was that he could adapt open source products much more quickly that non-OS ones, and that the support was better. He was preaching to the converted of course, but he was cool.
The talks started for proper today, and I sat in upon DJ and Piers' Transfusing Message Plasma into Business with Perl and Other Magic talk, which was really about Jabber and SAP. The talk was very interesting and the live demonstration only more so. I'm not quite sure what Jabber really is (once it's moved on from instant messaging) or that we need XML routers which aren't completely P2P, but it's terribly exciting anyway.
I headed down to the exhibition hall to check out who was there. The highlight was clearly the pingpong-playing robot, although the Cooltown pens were very pretty too ;-)
I then popped into davorg's Increasing Perl Use talk, which I'd seen before (and where he attempts to make all computer languages other than Perl illegal). I wonder at what point everyone realised it was a joke...
A quick lunch later, and I presented my Instant Compilers talk with Damian, which was fun, although we ran out of time towards the end. I sang a lexing song. People joined in. I don't think I'll quit my day job.
Muttley's "Flash in the Pan" talk was next, and was cool as always, and then I presented (for the last time!) my Graphing Perl talk. It was the last talk of the day. People relaxed and looked at my pretty pictures.
The evening started with a Fajita Fiesta. The food was cool and the band rocked. The band also rocked at the Stonehenge party, and it was great when esr starting jamming with the band.
The evening continued with much more partying and Danger Mouse (He's The Best. He's The Greatest. He's The Greatest Secret Agent In The World!)...
