Day 3 was the first really busy day at TPC.
I woke up early enough for a quick breakfast grab in the tent, then headed to the speaker lounge to read email for an hour or so.
At 10am, the exhibit hall opened, and since we have a table, I started the cycle of manning the table. Luckily, the wireless reaches into the hall, so I was happily on the net. There's only enough room for two people, so my trainer team took turns providing one or two faces to chat with about on-site and open-enrollment Perl training.
During the day, we've actually chatted with a lot more serious leads than I had predicted. This is a Good Thing. I think the industry is turning around, based on this reaction and on watching the perl jobs list.
At 10:45, I snuck in to the overly full presentation by Damian of "what's new in Perl 6", and as always, learned a few more things. I'm getting more comfortable every time I see it, and eagerly anticipating what's next.
But then it was back to the booth for an hour or two, until Damian's afternoon "how different is Perl 6 to program in?" talk, again in an over-full room.
As the trade show wound down for the day, I snuck out to see Tom Phoenix and a cast of a dozen others at the Lightning Talks. Yes, a few of those bad puns Tom gave were mine, but Tom deserves 98% of the credit (and 100% of the guts to do it).
Following that was a Helix-sponsored evening banquet, including some live music. From a marketing perspective, all I know is that Helix has a T-shirt design and enough money to pay for food for everyone, but I got no clue about who they are or why. There was no signage to even place them in a general category. Bad move.
Then it was back inside to the "Who's code is it anyway?", which I managed to walk in just as they were using my name as a prop for a laugh.
And then on to the ActiveState party. As usual, much beer to consume, and some cake, and the lopsided ratio of 72 guys to two cute ActiveState booth women. The annual "boat races" found me selecting "other" as a language to help the "Perl" team win, except that the "PHP" team had two ozzies on it, and won hands down. Never challenge an Ozzie to a drinking game. I stayed until 1:30am, then headed back to the hotel.
