If you've ever been to Monterey, you know that it can be accurately described as "majestic:" picturesque wharf, wonderful shops, crisp air, mountains spanning the horizon. So there were two thoughts that immediately went through my head when I stepped off the airplane for this year's Open Source Convention:
Yes, yes. I admit it. This is the first time I've ever been to the Open Source Convention. I think it was Tim O'Reilly who once said that this event feels like a family gathering: Everyone in the open source community already knows everyone else, they just rarely meet face to face. Being primarily a Java editor, I think that makes me the evil stepbrother of this family. So be it.
Consequently, I've gone into "sponge mode:" I will just shut up, be still, and suck up as much information as I can. Why shut up? Well, remember that placing Perl/CGI mongers and Java Servlet advocates in the same room is like splitting plutonium atoms sans the control rods. To make matters more exciting, each attendee of the cotitled Perl Conference 4.0 was given a small but very real Swiss Army knife in their conference bag. Let's be frank: I know when to keep my yapper shut.
I first started the day by checking to see if O'Reilly editor in chief Frank Willison, my boss, even recognized me. (I telecommute to O'Reilly from Austin, Texas. O'Reilly is based in Sebastopol, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.) Frank had no idea who I was, and I think this has to be one of my favorite O'Reilly moments. Not to be sycophantic, but you have to understand that Frank Willison's employees' revere him. Listening to people talk about Frank is a little like listening to Issac Hayes do the theme from Shaft. ("Who's that EIC with all those witty responses? It's Frank! It's Frank! He's one bad....") So catching Frank off-guard has to be one of those priceless Mastercard moments.
The first tutorial I attended was David Beazley's Introduction to Python. I've always held a quiet respect for Python and PHP based on what others have said about them, so I decided that I should get off my rump and learn more. And, I have to admit, I think it's a pretty slick language. I began wondering what I would use it for, and that's where I reached my conundrum: I couldn't figure out a practical use after learning Perl, Java, and C++. Perhaps grasshopper will reach a state of enlightenment at the Zope for Developers tutorial on Tuesday morning. On the other hand, he had fettucini alfredo for dinner, so believe me when I tell you there isn't a chance in hell he can walk on rice paper tomorrow without leaving a trace.
After a quick lunch with O'Reilly editor Andy Oram, I attended an afternoon talk on wireless connections with Linux. This tutorial should have been shorter, but it presented some great information about working with 802.11. It also made me want to go expense a ton of wireless equipment for my home network under the weak justification of "experimentation." Last, but not least, it made me glad that I'll never, ever, have to write a device driver (Got that, O'Reilly boss people?) for a wireless network card. A friend of mine once described RF as, "just...well.... It's really...weird." Sadly, I now know exactly what he was talking about.
Later in the afternoon I stumbled into a discussion with some O'Reilly editors on open documentation licenses. This is particularly important to me since one of my books, Using Samba, was published under a similar license and is freely available on the Internet. However, I have to admit I don't quite understand what the major differences between OCL and FDL are, so I quickly escaped and sought the wisdom of Andy Oram. His response: "It's not easy to compare the two side by side and you have to look at both in depth to see which is right for you." This is a topic I promise to examine when I get back to Austin.
Leeching onto Frank and O'Reilly editor Paula Ferguson for dinner led to a great seafood restaurant at the end of the wharf. Well, great except for one thing: I'm allergic to seafood. (Thank heavens for pasta!) Dinner was light and casual, with some discussion about everyone's favorite Tim O'Reilly moments. Tim putting his face in a cake; Tim sitting in the back of a van like a Garfield doll stuck to a window; something about a lake retreat. It was nice to laugh a little after dragging my heavy bag around the conference all day.
Finally, my apologies to O'Reilly editor Laura Lewin. This was her first day as an O'Reilly employee, and after having her flight into Monterey canceled, I managed to make her day worse by getting completely lost driving her to her hotel. I finally did get her there, but only after resorting to some desperate measures.
See you tomorrow when I get my bearings.
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