I was lucky enough to go along to the Friends of O’Reilly camp; it’s a different style of conference. The recipe is to put a bunch of geeks together, give them a number of rooms, feed them regularly, and see what they come up with.
There was an interesting mix of geeks there, including those who write code. those who manage the process, and those who write about it. There was also a bunch of O’Reilly editors observing what the geeks were talking about, as well as showing us the cool books they are editing or have just released. I met people whose names I knew and whose blogs I read, who don’t come to the XML conferences, so I wouldn’t normally get a chance to meet them. There’s something about being able to match up a person with their blog, and getting some idea of whether their blog persona matches their real persona.
There were some 12 rooms and the schedule was a self-arranging one, with people writing on poster boards when they wanted to talk and what they wanted to talk about. Some sessions were more like traditional presentations complete with slides, while others were more of a BOF. A lot was thought-provoking; I’ll be putting some of the thoughts down over the next little while when I’ve recovered some of the sleep-deficiency.
Before I go, one of the favorite geek toys (particularly amongst the kids) was the rocket launcher. This photo is courtesy of Stuart Cheshire; I couldn’t get a decent one.
