First impressions:
- along with the badge, you're given a small star if this is your first conference; the purpose is to help conference veterans to track down the newcomers and help them around.
- there's a few things they do here that aren't done at YAPC::{EU,NA} and the other way around too; I think we can improve our next conferences a lot by sharing experiences.
Introductions:
- Amanda gave a very interesting small talk on (not) bashing other languages. I found it a good thing to be done :-) One of the things she said was, basically, that it's wrong and unwanted to bash other languages... since I was doing a talk on obfuscation later on, I actually thought to myself: "but would it be OK if I bash my own language?"
Talks I've seen:
- Free software: a look back, a look ahead, by Randal Schwartz
Great keynote, with a comparison of licenses right in the beginning, a bit of history and some practical examples. The contents of this talk are going to be mighty useful to me!
- Perl White Magic: Special Variables and Command Line Switches, by myself
I had no chance of avoiding this one, eh?
I started the talk by saying that it really wasn't about Special Variables and Command Line Switches... since I'd be doing a talk on obfuscation and golfing and another one of Acme modules later on, this first talk was about me paying for my sins... in advance!
It went fairly well, I guess.
- Perl Black Magic: Obfuscation, Golfing and Secret Operators in Perl, by yours truly
After the morning tea, I proceeded to present my OGSOP talk...
Since we were running late from the very beginning, people got out of the rooms for the morning tea too late... however, the guy managing the room had orders to make sure the talk would start on time... and so we did! With about 5 people in the room!
10 slides later the room was finally composed.
Another talk that went fairly well.
- Wyle Coyote's Toolbox: The Acme Namespace: 30 minutes, 90 modules, by the same guy as before
And my final talk!
This was a first for me: having all my talks on the very first day of the conference, thus making me available to actually enjoy the other two days of the event as intended! Yay!
The more I give this talk, the better it gets, as I gather more and more knowledge about the Acme modules out there and their inner works. There's some really fucked up people out there... O:-)
The promise was 30 minutes, 90 modules. I started with the joke that since we had plenty of time we would wait for 10 minutes... I waited for the first laughs and I started... and the talk actually took me 20 minutes!
Next time around, 120 modules!
- Nothing can possibly goe wrong, by Adam Kennedy
Finally, a talk by someone else!
I met Adam in Chicago, and I really enjoyed talking to him, but I never really got the chance to see one of his talks.
This was my opportunity, so I took it.
The talk was great! And, as Adam says and I have to agree (at some point, at least), we don't need more Perl success stories, we need some Perl failure stories!
As I always say, it's true that we learn from our mistakes, but it's so much better when we learn from someone else's...
- BOF: Starting an Open Source Business
We had a BOF on how to stat an open source business. For this we had a panel of 4 people... who stood pretty much quiet while the audience discussed about 3 minutes of starting open source businesses and then proceeded to talk about licenses, business models, venture capital and other evil monsters.
I really enjoyed this BOF, as people spoke a lot about their experiences.
- The Da Vinci Codebase, by Damian Conway
The more I see Damian's talks, the more I convince myself that he is indeed an alien and that I should make some ammendments to my world domination plan, given that we definetely have some non-human (highly) intelligent beings among us.
When asked, Damian said this (wonderful and amazing) talk took 100 hours to prepare.
Someone asked "in a row?"
I ask "with an army of how many researchers?"
Amazing keynote, Damian! :-) You're the man! :-)
(To which Damian would probably reply with "It's what I do...")
- And during the night...
Thanks to my talk and to some booze, Adam is now trying to take over the Acme::Playmate module, to add it functionality. If he doesn't succeed in the taking over of the module, he says he's simply going to create Acme::Playmate::Object... with increased functionality, but treating women as objects...
I could also keep on going, talking about the taxi ride with a drunken Randal telling the driver that if the police made him stop he'd be more than willing to do the test for him, but I won't.
Another thing I won't mention is the "You know, as soon as you'd open the window, the policeman would probably say 'Eh... been drinking, uh?'" sentence.
As usual, I'll blame anything I might have written on the jetlag.
BTW, I'm enjoying the conference a lot.
Also, let it be said that the conference has much more talks than the ones I mentioned, but given the jetlag, those were the only ones I decided to attend.
