yesterday - wednesday at oscon
I really should have blogged yesterday yesterday. Instead, I fell asleep, and now I remember nothing.
Well, here’s what I do remember. Tim O’Reilly spoke about the state of Stuff in open source software and open society in general. I enjoy listening to Tim talk, even though I always feel like I’m being sold a bill of goods. A guy named Lefkowitz spoke after Tim, and he was mostly interesting, although he didn’t finish his talk. He made a lot of interesting suggestions, the most key of which was something like, “The key to making OSS legit is to deal with the accounting implications.” Also, “If you ever want to end a conversation with an accountant, ask about sentimental value.”
I saw Damian talk about Perl 6. It was inspiring, even though I know better. I saw Allison talk about the Perl 6 compiler, which was not very exciting, although I imagine it’s neat to work on. In a QA session by Tim Bunce I learned that it isn’t DBD::ODBC or even ODBC that makes concurrant MSSQL statement handles impossible: it’s MS SQL itself! Ugh. I saw Ask and Robert talk about Combust, but I was mostly lost. At the lightning talks, there were the usual hit and miss presentations. The lightning talks were followed by less limited, lower pressure “works in progress,” which was neat.
Around lunchtime (MS Lunch), Paul Blair (aka Masque) showed up, and he and I and Shawn and Ann and Rocco made a very quick circuit through the exhibit hall to get our free ORA book. I’m not extremely enthused over the book (Secure Coding Practises, or something like that), but hey! Free dummy!
Later in the afternoon, we ran out for some more gelato. I had “flor di latte” (I think) and it was wild, like sweet plain yogurt, but good! The trip was wild, too. There were six of us in Paul’s car. Paul drove, and dha took shotgun. That left Schwern, Joshua, Shawn, and me. We crammed in, though, because hey! Cheap gelato!
The post-gelato talks were the lightning talks and something Paul called the “thunder talks”—talks about things people are working on, given quickly. Five or ten minutes, but you don’t get yanked off stage when the bell rings. (There was no gong.) Then it was down to the basement for some beer and chips. I was tempted to just go to bed, but instead I gave in to Randal and headed to the Stonehenge party. It was good, as far as parties go, but I’m just really not a party person. I had a few drinks, spoke with a few people whom I didn’t know, and headed back to the hotel with a small crew of Perl people.