Day Two was a pair of tutorials for me. Now, I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: You can have so much important, useful, intelligent stuff to say, but if they put you on right after lunch, you have got to be more engaging of your audience, and you can't put them in a dark room and expect them to stay awake. Turn the lights up, even if that means spending less time on your powerpoint slides. Be energetic and engaging. You've got to, especially in a tutorial because they're longer, hold the attendee's attention for a long period of time when their body is telling them to sleep off their lunch.
Yesterday was a lot more interesting, though. First off, because it became abundantly clear that IT budget purse-strings are loosening again. The attendance this year was just huge. I haven't been in a room that wasn't overflowing into the hallway. Jeremy had joked on Tuesday "they put me in Salon E [huge-ass room] so there's absolutely no way it's sold out", and while he was right, it wasn't, it probably was pretty damned close. I've been to sessions yesterday where "the seats were full, the floor was full, the aisle was full, the doorway was full, the area BEHIND the people standing in the doorway was full, and getting any closer than six-feet-outside-the-door was damned near impossible. So, yes, attendance is high, and that's a good thing.
Dan Gillmor's talk was enlightening. None of it was really terribly surprising, about how the rise of "distributed journalism" in the form of blogging, etc., is having an effect on both where people get their news, but also what the media outlets begin to think of as newsworthy. In the afternoon, I attended the Apache Performance talk, which had a lot of information I already knew as well as some new things to try out when I get home.
"Why Data Stinks," though, was another great session. It was basically a talk about data-constraints and where you should be setting up those constraints in a database-driven application. Was really interesting stuff.
The Perl Lightning talks, this year, were really disappointing. Maybe I just remember when there were a lot more, maybe it's that they've split up the Lightning talks and the WIP (Work In Progress) talks (in past years, WIPs got the same 5 minutes as anyone else). Personally, I liked the old format, where WIPs were just another lightning talk. I don't want to go listen to a WIP where one guy can potentially drag on about a topic for 10 minutes that I care nothing about. Get him on-stage, force him to concentrate on the important bits, and get him off-stage. If I'm interested, I'll find him after and chat. If I'm not, I won't care because I only have to listen to him for five minutes.
We also had our first "formal" book-signing last night, as O'Reilly rolled out a couple dozen O'Reilly authors. The only thing I saw wrong with this was that -- since O'Reilly now subs out the on-site book store to Powells -- ORA couldn't directly sell copies of the books right at the booksigning table. When ORA ran the book-store themselves, they'd just bring inventory over and make it easier for people to buy the book and get it signed. With the way it is now, you basically have to tell the prospective recipient "go away and buy the book" which gives them the opportunity to get distracted, not come back, etc. I understand the business reasons behind the way it is now, but it still would make a lot of sense to be able to sell directly from the tables.
There were two parties in the evening I attended. One in a location I will not disclose hosted by a publishing company and it was cool. I got to see a lot of people I don't see all that often, put faces to some names from e-mail and blogging, as well as got to meet a couple other people I really enjoyed. After that, we headed over for Stonehenge's annual soiree. Lots of cool people, although it seemed a little less populated this year than last (but then again, we weren't there all that late and it probably picked up as the night went on, knowing the way Randal's parties go).
A couple other random notes before I get showed and ready for today's activities:
- 5 minutes in between sessions is really not enough time. You can't clear out a room in 5 minutes.
- Portland is beautiful, but I suspect we need a larger capacity place to hold it next year
- The wireless has been really pretty decent this year. I complained a lot last year about why the WLAN didn't have a budget to "do it right". Apple apparently sponsored the WLAN this year, and aside from a brief hiccup yesterday, I have yet to have any significant problems with it. Kudos to all involved
Enough for now... more later.
Glad you enjoyed our event. Actually, total attendance was higher than last year's event, although the peak seemed a bit later in the evening. We were competing with more events this year for the early part.