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pukkuCon day 1 has come and gone. Not as good as LISA.
- Woke up too late (stupid me and books + nyquil), so I wasn't able to shave (yes, I did shower).
- First session I attended was on usability testing. It was interesting, and cool, but on reflection I think I should have attended the newbie-to-ninja one. The usability testing stuff was probably of less immediate import to me.
- Dr-presumptive Buytaert (he's defended his thesis, but I don't think he's actually graduated) is a smart guy, with interesting ideas, and a fantastic eye (his slides rock, seriously), but he's not a presenter. You can get almost (not quite, but pretty darn close) all of the content of his talk from the slides, down to the exact words. The curse of PowerPoint strikes again (see Tufte). The RDF ideas sound wicked cool, but I have no clue how they're going to be implemented. Of course, I also started freezing about twenty minutes from the end -- I have no idea what they were doing to their AC, but it just got _cold_
- The food? At the Boston Convention Center Food Court? Sucked. Really. They aren't set up to handle the number of people that we had (which was just 800, small as conferences go). And really? I would have been better of eating the trays the food was served on. I may try a different option tomorrow if I get desperate, but I'd probably prefer to go out and pay for my food myself.
- Also, the design of the convention center is a bit whack.
- The GHOP / DROP session was ok, although not really important to me, it was cool to see young people excited about working on stuff. Although, also a little scary -- one young lad, age 11?, too young to work on GHOP so he had to be a mentor, something like 10 modules either to his name or he's a maintainer/contributer on. I feel stupid and unaccomplished.
- Panels and Nodequeue session was cool -- I now know how to implement the master binder list -- I have a use for nodequeue.
- Some session about designing on the edge: sucked. There was no point, the guy couldn't figure out how to speak so that anyone could hear him.
- The "Industry Networking" event I went to for education was a bust as well. It was scheduled for 5p until around 4:35p when it was changed to 6p. Great. Except a lot of us didn't learn about this change. So I show up at Legal Test Kitchen at ~4:40p (yes, I'm early everywhere, but I'm not looking for a job, so the job fair wasn't interesting to me). At around 5p, there are four of us. But, LTK has no idea that we're coming. As in, no one has made a reservation. At around 5:30p, we have 9 people, and for some reason I don't know, I'm somehow in charge of things. At least, the LTK people are asking me questions. So (I don't know the time has been changed), I guess we'll maybe have about 15 people, so they (very graciously) set up a spot for us, and then people start pouring in. Like, suddenly we jump from 9 people to about 24. And then 40. And then I lose count. All this in about 35 minutes. And again, they had _no idea_ that this was happening. We're all sitting at a long table (initially, although we eventually take over this entire section of the restaurant), and, as often happens, I'm near some people who I can't seem to get into a conversation with, so I'm sitting around with people talking all around me, and it's loud, and there's really only about four people I could talk with anyway (again, I suck at dealing with people). And they're trying to take our orders, but more people are showing up, and they're cannibalizing tables from everywhere. Eventually we get food (and it isn't really that good, at least mine isn't). So I decide that since I need to go in to work to grab email and stuff, I'll just get leave. And then the guy who "organized" it tells me I should just talk with the waiter who can give me an _individual bill_! This guy is crazy! There's about 50+ people, they were given no notice, I think he's out of his mind. I eventually leave money with someone who was sitting near me (I had about $20 worth of food, I left $30 so that the tip would be nice), and go to work (where I promised that I would save the universe from disaster by Wednesday week).
- OTOH, the waiter was wicked cute. Kind of a little like Nick Carter, only not quite? He was tall, broad-shouldered, cute face, seemed nice.
All in all, I hope things get better. Or that I meet someone to talk with. Or something.
- Woke up too late (stupid me and books + nyquil), so I wasn't able to shave (yes, I did shower).
- First session I attended was on usability testing. It was interesting, and cool, but on reflection I think I should have attended the newbie-to-ninja one. The usability testing stuff was probably of less immediate import to me.
- Dr-presumptive Buytaert (he's defended his thesis, but I don't think he's actually graduated) is a smart guy, with interesting ideas, and a fantastic eye (his slides rock, seriously), but he's not a presenter. You can get almost (not quite, but pretty darn close) all of the content of his talk from the slides, down to the exact words. The curse of PowerPoint strikes again (see Tufte). The RDF ideas sound wicked cool, but I have no clue how they're going to be implemented. Of course, I also started freezing about twenty minutes from the end -- I have no idea what they were doing to their AC, but it just got _cold_
- The food? At the Boston Convention Center Food Court? Sucked. Really. They aren't set up to handle the number of people that we had (which was just 800, small as conferences go). And really? I would have been better of eating the trays the food was served on. I may try a different option tomorrow if I get desperate, but I'd probably prefer to go out and pay for my food myself.
- Also, the design of the convention center is a bit whack.
- The GHOP / DROP session was ok, although not really important to me, it was cool to see young people excited about working on stuff. Although, also a little scary -- one young lad, age 11?, too young to work on GHOP so he had to be a mentor, something like 10 modules either to his name or he's a maintainer/contributer on. I feel stupid and unaccomplished.
- Panels and Nodequeue session was cool -- I now know how to implement the master binder list -- I have a use for nodequeue.
- Some session about designing on the edge: sucked. There was no point, the guy couldn't figure out how to speak so that anyone could hear him.
- The "Industry Networking" event I went to for education was a bust as well. It was scheduled for 5p until around 4:35p when it was changed to 6p. Great. Except a lot of us didn't learn about this change. So I show up at Legal Test Kitchen at ~4:40p (yes, I'm early everywhere, but I'm not looking for a job, so the job fair wasn't interesting to me). At around 5p, there are four of us. But, LTK has no idea that we're coming. As in, no one has made a reservation. At around 5:30p, we have 9 people, and for some reason I don't know, I'm somehow in charge of things. At least, the LTK people are asking me questions. So (I don't know the time has been changed), I guess we'll maybe have about 15 people, so they (very graciously) set up a spot for us, and then people start pouring in. Like, suddenly we jump from 9 people to about 24. And then 40. And then I lose count. All this in about 35 minutes. And again, they had _no idea_ that this was happening. We're all sitting at a long table (initially, although we eventually take over this entire section of the restaurant), and, as often happens, I'm near some people who I can't seem to get into a conversation with, so I'm sitting around with people talking all around me, and it's loud, and there's really only about four people I could talk with anyway (again, I suck at dealing with people). And they're trying to take our orders, but more people are showing up, and they're cannibalizing tables from everywhere. Eventually we get food (and it isn't really that good, at least mine isn't). So I decide that since I need to go in to work to grab email and stuff, I'll just get leave. And then the guy who "organized" it tells me I should just talk with the waiter who can give me an _individual bill_! This guy is crazy! There's about 50+ people, they were given no notice, I think he's out of his mind. I eventually leave money with someone who was sitting near me (I had about $20 worth of food, I left $30 so that the tip would be nice), and go to work (where I promised that I would save the universe from disaster by Wednesday week).
- OTOH, the waiter was wicked cute. Kind of a little like Nick Carter, only not quite? He was tall, broad-shouldered, cute face, seemed nice.
All in all, I hope things get better. Or that I meet someone to talk with. Or something.
