Friday! The keynotes on the last day of OSCON were the best: A very cool presentation by Dave Bradely (IBM engineer who invented ctrl+alt+delete) about the history of computers and what open source means to him.

Then, Damian Conway (Perl master) gave an amazing fake-keynote on some great new technologies. It was really just a skit to make fun of tech trends today but it was so funny that people were about to fall out of their seats. I’ve heard that Damian is an amazing speaker even when he’s serious. Makes me really regret his Mastering VIM tutorial.

I attended one really boring session of the titled-wrong-just-so-you-might-attend kind, kind of a bait-and-switch situation. I then decided to attend a full session from Dave Bradley about the history of PCs because I was so interested from his morning keynote. Not quite a usual OSCON session but it was a good way to end the sessions.

The closing keynote was by a lawyer who is involved in protecting free software and trying to protect us from the patent system. He went on for a while longer than necessary but he really had people thinking by the end. He was the only speaker I saw recieve a standing ovation.

I then headed back to work to finish up some loose ends. I had spent almost forty hours over the last two weeks carrying around my laptop bag and sitting for hours on end - not only is my mind ready for a break but so is my shoulders and back.

Beth took the MAX down to meet me after work and we had a picnic at the waterfront. Later I took her to Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Flicks on the Bricks showing of City Slickers. It was colder than we anticipated but we really had fun.

One of my coworkers mentioned that I was probably the first web engineer to work for TechTracker who had attended all three days of the sessions - and all of the sessions available on each day. Most just picked a few and then left to return to work. She was surprised that I had actually spent so much time there.

I asked her to also mention the fact that I got my work done while doing so - that is a crucial thing to remember. However, I told her that I was surprised. The other web engineer did attend some sessions but she didn’t stay for more than a few.

My reasoning was that I’m being giving the chance to learn anything I want relating to the open source technology from the best open source leaders in the world - for free. The only thing that kept me from attending more session was the laws of physics. Having the chance to be exposed to the crowd and the information is worth having to work until two in the morning. It’s only a few days.

Oh well, that’s them. This is me.

The morning keynotes were a bit boring for me so I went out to the hall and started checking email and such. There was a lady who was doing some interviews to gather research for a paper on the open source movement and about technology groups in general and she spoke with me for abour twenty minutes, it was very interesting.

I ran down to the Exhibit Hall to see if there was anyone new but there wasn’t, and no one had brought in any new swag or anything so I went and sat in one of the blow-up chairs until the first session. The first session was done by Rasmus Lerdorf, the creater of PHP. It was very cool to see him speak and to think that he created the programming language that I use every day. Plus, he was a good speaker with a good topic.

The next session was about PostgreSQL, an alternative to MySQL which I figured I’d check out. I’ve been wanting to plat with it for a while but I’m so comfortable with MySQL that I don’t see any reason to switch over. I even asked the guys at the PostgreSQL both why I should switch, and they seemed a bit unprepared for that question.

The afternoon continued with presentations on PHP from Chris Shiflett again, Laura Thomson, and John Coggeshall - all three are major players in the PHP world. All three were very interesting sessions.

I next attended a meeting of the local PHP group, PDXPHP (which I’ve attended before), because they had almost every PHP big-wig at OSCON drop by from some Q&A. Rasmus, Chris, Laura, John, Andre, Wez, etc. It was very exciting.

I got home a bit earlier than expected but I immediately started working on some TechTracker work. There was some urgency in the work so for the first time in three years I was up until 2 the next morning.

The second day of OSCON was definately better in terms of the session content.

The day began with an nice intro by Tim O’Reilly, founder of the O’Reilly company. He talked about what open source was and how it has changed over the years. He talked about his feelings on open source licenses and how they are becoming obsolete with the introduction of new web-based software applications.

The first session of the day wasn’t too great - the speaker was very hard to understand, the room was too big, and the font-size on his presentation was too small. He didn’t really talk about how to solve the problems he spent the session describing.

The next session was much better and things started to pick up. I attended an excellent overview of the advanced features of the Prototype javascript library. I asked if the speaker had any recommended documentation sources and his response was “honestly, just read through the source code. I assure you it’s the best place to learn.” While not totally what I wanted to hear, he’s right.

I strolled around the exhibit hall and collected ten free shirts, pens, mints, blah blah. I even got a hat - I don’t really wear hats but who turns down a free hat? OSCON provided a nice lunch and while I was eating I met Ian from Ottawa, Canada. He works with the Eclipse foundation, though I didn’t learn what exactly he does. We spent most of the time talking about Portland and how nice it is to have such a large conference here every year.

After lunch I attended some more sessions. I have always read books, articles, and the blog of Chris Shifflet so it was great to see him in person finally. He’s a great speaker so I’m excited for another presentation of his tomorrow. After another PHP session with Wez Furlong I strolled through the exhibit hall again and then attended the Firefox Flicks screening. I got to chat for a while with Asa Dotzler who I’ve also been reading a lot of material from.

We saw some of the best entires into the firefox flicks contest and I was lucky enough to score a DVD of those entries afterward. I also asked about the possibility of getting one of the better ones an actual broadcast spot, which seems to me to be a great chance to get Firefox into the minds of average computer users.

I finally lugged all my collected swag back home at ten and got to bed around midnight. I have several software and document DVDs to sort through and my bookmarks list has twenty new entries that I have to find time to revisit later. One aspect of conferences that didn’t occur to me is how much time will be spent doing more research into the topics summarized in the sessions.

I took pics which I’ll put up sometime soon. Tomorrow is another day!

The sessions today were generally not as interesting as those yesterday. I began the morning with Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits, and that was well done. It made me want to buy the book but after the session it was sold out. Dan was a very good speaker and had some excellent material prepared.

I attended a few more sessions which were ok - either the material just wasn’t what I was hoping for or the speakers were doing a lousy job of keeping things running smoothly, or both.

The two keynotes were so interesting that they made up for the dull sessions. The first keynote was by a design lead at Frog Design who was trying to explain how the gap between technology and everyday objects is closing, and if we don’t change how we design the technology then we won’t be able to make that bridge a success. His focus was on understanding the brain and how it develops relationships with real-world objects, and then analyzing how we interact with those objects. Those lessons should be applied to how we interact with the future of tech. Plus, he was probably one of the best public speakers I’ve seen. VERY COOL.

The next keynote was about usability (the speaker works for User Interface Engineering) and the user experience, trying to figure out what makes for a good experience versus bad. Common examples included Netflix, the company that came from nowhere to dominate the movie market with little money and minimum advertising, while power-houses like Blockbuster were unable to compete. Another example was Apple conquering the music industry in a matter of years while the big-wigs at Sony, Warner, etc watched in shock.

They were able to do it because they made the user experience a very positive one, while other companies failed. It was a nice little convention and it was certainly a nice prelude to the biggy next week, OSCON.

I’m pretty lucky in that I live in Portland and don’t have to worry about travel. However, today it reached 108 on my way home from the convention center.

P.S. Here is a list of flickr photos tagged webvisions2006 (it’s funny, you can see how interested in everyone was in the juggling convention next door).

P.S.S. My head is in this picture. The tallest head by the right wall just right of the screen.

I arrived at the Oregon Convention Center and went in to the entrance on the opposite side of the building from where I wanted to be. I was suddenly surrounded by men riding unicycles and kids juggling as they walked down the hall. Some men were getting lessons on how to juggle sticks and bowling pins. This was obviously not WebVisions 2006.

Turns out it was the Internation Juggling Convention. I made my way down the extremely long hallway and finally found the registration area for the conference I was actually there for (although juggling would have been entertaining). I got my badge and my swag-bag and went in.

WebVisions isn’t the most exciting convention as the sessions were more like a review of the basics for someone who keeps up on the new stuff. It was still interesting though as I saw some presentations on progressions of the latest trends and technologies. One session was particularly interesting and had two speakers - one from eBay and one from Yahoo! - who spoke about their similar-yet-different experiences with building design patterns for their particular sites. It was very general without much technology mentioned, but it was still very interesting to hear how eBay and Yahoo! solved their respective problems.

Luckily it’s common for presenters to post the slides, materials, links, and even audio from the sessions so that you can easily return to something later on. I was only there for three sessions today, but tomorrow I’ll be there all day.