Perl conferences are probably the best events of my current life. Mostly because of the people I get to meet there.
Here are my highlights:
Met with the organizers (I actually searched for them, because I had to give my slides to Mark).
Saw the Intro, by Dave Green (where can I find the lyrics for that song?) I enjoyed that intro :-)
Met Pedro Melo, another Portuguese (working in Lisbon) in the workshop. Hurray! I'm not the only one! :-D
I decided to stay in the "Learning Perl" room, because I thought the first two talks in the "Advanced Perl" room wouldn't interest me much (I was wrong, I admit it) and I was kind of curious as to what the first two talks in that room would be about.
Saw the "Perl Gimmes" talk, by Greg McCarrol.
Saw the "Perl coding best practices" talk, by Mark Fowler.
I'll try to be modest, but the truth is that both those talks were pretty basic for me (at least I thought so). But I noticed they were pretty important for the rest of the audience. I got the feeling that my White Magic talk would be really suitable for that audience... I'm sorry I didn't propose it :-| Maybe next year, who knows :-) Perl White Magic enhanced? :-)
Left the room (I was about to do my talk, in the other room).
Was introduced to Simon, from Fotango.
My talk! Perl Black Magic enhanced! More Obfuscation! More Golfing!
Now...
I believe I am failing somewhere... people really seem to enjoy that talk, but it seems that whoever digs it keeps on digging it and whoever doesn't keeps on not to... and that was not my point! My talk is not about entertaining people! I mean, it is, but it's not just that! Obfuscation and Golfing really are good for you, in the sense that you become aware of certain things and aspects of the language, an hence a better programmer... Maybe I should do that talk again someday and try to clear that out... and improve the part on golfing, while I'm at it...
Then I bailed out of Mark's talk (I had seen it in Belfast, but I'm still sad I missed it). I went to talk to Simon and James about next year's YAPC::EU (it's in Portugal, you know?)
Then... lunch!!
OK...
Everybody's posting about the workshop, but I haven't seen anyone else talking about the pies yet... :-) I may have missed something, because I'm still some journals late, but I think no one did :-) OK, the pies weren't so bad, but they could be better... As for the Pepsi, it was diet :-( Why, I ask? :-(
Afternoon starts. I stayed in the "Advanced Perl" room, this time.
Got the chance to introduce myself (very quickly) to Dave Cross, while I was entering the room. Hi, Dave :-)
"Advanced Testing", by Marty, was pretty cool :-)
"When Perl isn't enough - XS, Inline & Embedding for the confused", by Alex Gough, was not my kind of talk... I mean, it was interesting, but I need something more for XS... Well, but he said it himself: "I'm not trying to teach you XS, that would be impossible in just 40 minutes; I am merely trying to show you it is possible! (OK, maybe those weren't the exact words, but you get the idea). I guess I'll have to look into it when I have the time.
"Managing and sending mail", by Casey West, was one of the most interesting talks of the day for me :-) Thanks, Casey :-)
"The dark corners of Perl, by Simon Wislow, as others already mentioned, didn't really cover the parts of Perl it said it would, but was still interesting :-) Very much, actually :-)
And it's bar time!!
Of course that I don't drink, so...
Met David Cantrell, with whom I talked a bit about one of my modules getting a more standard API. He was a bit upset about me not drinking, and even more when he found out the guy who had bought the London.pm Experience (me) was a non-drinker :-) Sorry 'bout that, David :-) But I'll really enjoy the London'ers company, that I can tell you :-)
Talked a bit with lots of other people.
Overall, I enjoyed it pretty much :-)
Thank you, everybody :-)
One other thing I like about talking in this kind of conferences is people walking out of the room, passing by me and saying things like "Thank you, I liked it a lot" (after my talk) with a smile on their faces. Now *that* really makes it all worth it :-)
Got the chance to introduce myself (very quickly) to Dave Cross, while I was entering the room.
Aha. A mystery solved. You took me by surprise a bit and I didn't catch your name. Now I know who I said hello to
