OSCon was a thing of beauty. An awkward, lumbering thing of beauty, for what that vague image is worth. A week of tech geek talks, corporate parties and vendor schwag. Damian Conway was notably absent this year, which put a dent in the experience, and although the closing keynote was interesting, it didn’t have the brilliance of Eben Moglen’s speech last year. Nevertheless, I had a good time.
There were the usual presentations of arcane and even somewhat useful programming methods, discussion and demonstrations of open-source hardware efforts, an auctioned lunch with Larry Wall, and lots of mostly useless free stuff. I managed to spend less than $100 at Powell’s. The evenings were busy and fun, and I’m a little sad that I crashed and missed out on the Sun party.
Also, I won an iPhone at the SourceForge party. I’m not quite sure what to do with it… sell it, maybe? I already have a phone that I really like (a Sony Ericsson K790a). And probably 18 months left on my T-Mobile contract.
I have some notes that I’ll be massaging into something palatable for work, so as to justify my trip and help remind me of what I’ve learned, technically. I also have a few OSCon pictures of my own that will likely make their way online sooner or later. For the time being, thanks to the other attenders for the flickr photos I’ve linked to above.
Two days of work, and then I’ll be off on another trip for the rest of the week…
