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.