OSCON, Day 2 (People for Geeks)
Tuesday ended up being only day of the entire conference I didn't
do a presentation, and as such I have some ability to relax and
enjoy the presentations of others. Most importantly, I attend
People for Geeks, a three hour tutorial featuring all my favourite
people, including a few that I didn't know would end up being
my favourites. ;)
The whole of People for Geeks was excellent. Having different presenters on short topics not only fixes the problem of learning fatigue, but makes it easier for presenters to give their best material. My favourite section was probably Selena and Gabrielle's talk on managing user groups and communities, and I was lucky enough to get one of their booklets on the topic.
Tuesday night was the OSCON Extravaganza. r0ml, who I had never seen speak before, gave an outstanding and hilarious talk on software development models, tying in the classics in a most elegant way. Damian Conway follows-up with a talk title I won't try to reproduce here, but it combines all the odd physics I could imagine with Perl. It's also excellent, as we've all come to expect from Damian.
After the excellent presentations are the White Camel awards, to recognise some of the oft unsung heroes of the Perl community. However a few minutes before the awards are announced, I get a sneak preview through a private message on IRC with regards to one of the winners:
(8:26:31 PM) jmcadams: hi paul, are you in the oscon presentation now?
(8:26:44 PM) pfenwick: I sure am!
(8:26:51 PM) jmcadams: good deal
(8:27:04 PM) jmcadams: Jacinta is getting a white camel
(8:27:12 PM) jmcadams: would you accept it on her behalf?
Woah!
Needless to say, I was stunned and delighted to accept the White Camel on Jacinta's behalf. I don't think I even said anything when I accepted it, and usually it's hard to stop me from speaking to an audience given the opportunity.
Jacinta has a little more in her blog about how surprised she was to be given the award.
After the extravaganza, I (unsurprisingly) went back to my hotel room and worked on my slides for my Wednesday presentation. In particular, I asked Damian nicely if I could obtain an image and fragment of code from his talk, so I could use them as a callback in mine. I'm very thankful that Damian agreed, since it provided me with two extra guaranteed laughs from the audience the next day.
