This year's OSCON was the best I've been to since it left California (my third in Portland, I think). I am not quite sure why. The technical content seemed higher, at least in the sessions I went to (although there were two sessions on cross-domain Ajax, in the same room, on the same day ... oops). Maybe it's because I didn't go to as many Perl track sessions as usual?
I noted before I was disappointed in the lack of Perl content at OSCON. Maybe I still am. But I also said at the time that my complaint was only about the Perl content, not the conference as it is, what it has become. It's still an excellent conference, even if it is no longer "The Perl Conference."
If your only interest is Perl, then you might be a bit disappointed. Then again, you might not: there's lots of Damian, there's MJD, there's Larry, there's Peter Scott, there's lots of Perl content around. I am just old and jaded and have seen and heard most of it before.
Then again, maybe that's why OSCON has less interesting Perl content (to me, and others): because fewer people are creating interesting Perl content, because we've all seen it before. [Insert Jarkko's sig here.]
Regardless, if you are interested in Apache and MySQL and JavaScript and even Ruby or Python or PHP or whatever, or you don't care about sessions and want to just hang out and talk to lots of people, then OSCON's pretty damned good. I enjoyed it, and learned quite a bit, both from the sessions and from just hanging out and chatting.
The food wasn't to my liking. I miss the crummy box lunches we had in San Diego. :-)
Somewhat idle thought: sometimes I wish there could be a whole day at OSCON of nothing but BOFs; it seems there's too little time to go to all the ones you might want to go to, and there's a lot going on at night anyway. Maybe Tuesday could be BOF day for people who don't attend tutorials? Promoting it might hurt O'Reilly's bottom line, encouraging people to avoid tutorials, but ... it's late, maybe it's a stupid idea.
Maybe Tuesday could be BOF day for people who don't attend tutorials?
My first OSCON experience was Monterey in 98 and I really enjoyed the BOFs. I was on my own a long way from home and the BOFs helped me learn stuff and meet people and network. My second OSCON experience was Portland last year. There was a lot I liked more, but I did miss the BOFs. My networking happenined at parties and events, but it was a different atmosphere.
I'd be surprised if running the BOFs throughout the day on Tuesday had any significant effect on O'Reilly's income - I suspect the tutorials and BOFs appeal to different audiences.
There was an OSCamp this year and there will be one next year.
Re:OSCamp at OSCON
pudge on 2006-08-09T18:17:55
I didn't really know anything about OSCamp. I thought it was one of those invitation things, like FooCamp. Apparently, I was mistaken.
Maybe that's sufficient (though with larger room?).
