OSDC/YAPC::AU in hindsight
It's done. After a year of planning and hard work, from a volunteer committee comprised of members much more dedicated and skilled than myself, everything paid off and the conference is complete. The feedback we received has been outstanding, everyone appears to have been extremely happy with the conference. The only blight was the so-called coffee, which we'll be gladly upgrading next year. The rest of the food and drinks, on the other hand, were very good indeed. Many kudos go to Nathan Bailey and Jacinta for organising the catering.
I now hold a new and deep respect for anyone who's organised a conference. It's a lot of work, and in the final days (and the conference itself) there's little time for sleep or socialising.
Lack of sleep aside, this was way way up in the top few conferences that I've attended. We had some superb speakers, and a huge contingent of Perl programmers.
Damian was present for both introductory and closing keynotes, and as much as I keep thinking that Damian's presentation skills couldn't possibly get any better, they do. Damian played excellently to his audience, not all who were Perl programmers, and presented two lightning talks entirely in song from Gilbert and Sullivan.
Abigail and his wife were present at the conference on their honeymoon. Apparently they had seen Damian present a brief mention of OSDC and a showcase of our (very deadly) Australian fauna, and decided that it would make an excellent holiday destination.
We were lucky enough to have Nat Torkington attend, after a few moments of doubt in the early days. Nat presented a very interesting keynote on changes in book sales, and inferred conclusions for changes in the software industry. It also seemed that whenever I bumped into Nat he was giving me something -- T-shirts, books, laughter, and even drinks.
Adam Kennedy from Phase-N and prolific CPAN author, who I had bumped into on a number of common industry mailing lists, was in attendance and great value for money. He presented an excellent 'speed-dating CPAN' lightning talk, with a new module every 15 seconds. Adam was also very lucky to hear about a grant he had received for further work on Perl.
Baden Hughes from The Perl Foundation was only able to attend the last day, and presented an excellent discussion on how to both give and receive money from TPF. Unfortunately Baden was scheduled at the same time as the lightning talks, and the lightning talks proved to be wildly popular. Next year I'm sure we'll shut down the other streams during the lightning talk sessions.
Dinner had the first Perl Review, along with original artwork, go up for auction. Despite some heavy bidding I didn't walk away with it, although the winner (Kat Grant) promised that I could read it. The hilight of the auctions for me was Abigail purchasing a YAPC 19100 t-shirt identical to the one he was wearing at the time.
I've got a few days worth of photographs to put on-line. This is a mostly automated process, but involves me weeding out the ones that didn't work out or not suitable for public consumption, and writing up captions if I have the time. Some day zero photos are already online.
Unfortunately on the third day I had charged the batteries for the camera, but didn't actually bring them. Anyone who has photographs from the third day (or any day at all), please get in contact with me.
Scotty, who was conference chair, surprised the committee with a multi-tool thank-you gift each. Nat Torkington, giving away things even when I wasn't nearby, surprised the committee with offers of books and t-shirts of our choice.
After the conference there was a celebration at the local pub, cleanup, and a few survivors (myself and Jacinta included) went out for some very tasty Japanaese food.
Special Mention
One special mention should go to Daniel Pittman, who kept me sane during the conference. Clients have an uncanny knack of developing problems during conferences and holidays, and Daniel fielded an incredible number of issues including some heavy-duty destruction of websites and machines. This kept me sane, although meant that Daniel had a much less enjoyable conference than he would have otherwise.
Other Reports
If you know of another report or blog that's mentioned OSDC, I'd love for you to record it on the OSDC wiki.
