This year I had a very flexible OSCON. Instead of getting a booth for OSCON, Stonehenge sponsored Josh McAdams' trip so he could record a bunch of interviews for Perlcast. I'm eagerly waiting the one from Tim Bunce, myself.
I didn't see many of the talks, and many of the talks I've seen before. For me, OSCON is mostly catching up with all the O'Reilly people. I have soem work ahead of me once I get done with Mastering Perl (which is still on schedule, so it's not that I'm slacking :)
Chris brought with him a nice poker set, and for two nights we played in the common area of the conference hall. On the second night, Richard Hipp (the SQLite guy) sat next to me and killed me in the first hand, as I recall. Various fanboys came up to him furing the game, but I figured he'd just like to play poker so I didn't try to chat him up about how much I like SQLite (or things that I want to change, either).
I didn't hit any of the parties this year. Since we were sponsoring Josh, he went to the parties and called me if they had any good food. Very few did, but then neither of us checked out the Google party either. Someone told me that the pre-screening Perl test for Google is to name the three Perl sigils (which means that even they don't know them all, apparently). If you want a job, they're hiring, but don't expect to work with brainics. I heard from a few sources they hire what they can get and sort it out later.
On Thursday afternoon I bummed around the Apress booth for a bit. Julie Miller is a "book nut" and not only works for a publisher of open source technology books, but an independent bookstore in the Bay area. Apress also had the coolest swag: a black runners hat (mesh on the sides, low rise) with the Apress logo in yellow. Only slightly cooler is Andy Lester's "Apress author" hat, although I like the little animal on my "O'Reilly author" hat.
All the other swag didn't make it out of my hotel room. I don't need anymore buttons, bottle openers, pens, or t-shirts. I could use some more thumb drives since I lose those almost immediately. Anyone listening out there? More thumb drives next year.
chromatic put together a brief history of The Perl Conference to celebrate its 10th anniversary. I think my arm got into one of the photos, at least. It was mostly a collection of pics, Larry's State of the Onion, and listings of the White Camel Awards (now in its eighth year!). This means YAPC is coming up on its own tenth anniversary pretty soon.
I checked out OSCAMP a couple of times. It seemed mostly lame and looked much like a kindergarten room. I guess it was trying to harness and organize the hallway track, but as soon as that happens it looses it's main attraction: unorganization and spontaneity. It's not like you need to reserve a corner of the room to talk about a subject. I bet the real movers and shakers still did business over meals and next to the entrances of the ballrooms.
I hope that O'Reilly will create another Perl CD bookshelf with all the updated books (Learning, Intermediate, Mastering). I use my v4 at work all the time.
I will probably get them anyway. : )
