Memoirs of a Roadie

All Over The World

Posted on 19th May 2010

Last year I went to 3 conferences, YAPC::NA, YAPC::Europe and LUGRadio Live. All very different in their own way, although all Open Source. Due to other projects, work and fanmily commitments, it has take quite a bit of time to review all the photos. After several months, I finally found some time to whittle them down to the selection I have uploaded here.

The first conference, YAPC::NA, took place in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The team have been holding the Pittsburgh Perl Workshops for several years now, and by all accounts they had been very well received. With the YAPC set of conferences having started in Pittsburgh, at the Carnegie Mellon University where this conference also took place, the organisers were quite proud to promote a sort of home coming for the event. It was a good conference, though my first talk was somewhat problematic as we couldn't get a laptop to work with the projector. Thankfully my second talk went without a hitch. My thanks to confound for introducing me to 'xrandr', which solved all the problems I had getting Ubuntu talking to the projectors.

I also took the chance to visit the city of Pittsburgh and take a look around, with Abigail and myself taking an amphibious vehicle tour. The city has a lot of interesting places to see, and I'm glad I got to see the Heinz Building, the Stanley Theatre (where Bob Marley played his last ever gig), the venicular railways, and the site of the Three River Stadium (Yes, the car park! I'd seen a documentary about the building of Heinz Field and the demolishing of the Three River Stadium, so was even more intrigued to have a guided tour of the new stadium). If you're ever near the city, I recommend a visit, especially to see the flood levels of 1936 (the waters peaked at a rise of 46 feet above normal!).

The second conference, YAPC::Europe, was in Lisbon, Portugal. The conference itself was packed full of talks, though I think my lightning talk, which I'd been refining over the previous few months, generated the biggest reaction. Not surprising really, as it reminded people just how productive the Perl community was, particularly regarding CPAN.

I had originally thought about hiring a car and travelling along the Vasco da Gama Bridge (at 10.7 miles long, the longest road bridge in Europe), and do the circuit via the monument on the other side of the Tejo river, and back to Lisbon via the 25 de Abril Bridge (Lisbon's other bridge). I didn't in the end, but maybe I can save that for another time. Instead fellow Birmingham.pm'er Brian McCauley and myself walked around the city and took in some of the sights. When we got to the castle we managed to bump into a few other attendees (Paul Johnson, Aaron Crane and R Geffory Avery), who also had taken the advantage to do some sightseeing.

The last conference I attended was LUGRadio Live. For a number of reasons I didn't put forward a talk this year, but suggested JJ should give a talk instead. With the radio show no longer running, the conference had much more of a grassroots feel to it again. There ware some good talks, a couple of famous names, but mostly it felt like it was one big Linux User Group meeting, which to a degree it was, just a bit more global than your regular user group meeting ;) The conference was dubbed 'Back To Basic', but that really only applied to the extravagance. The quality of the conference was first rate. Being in Wolvehampton, just round the corner for me, I didn't take the opportunity to do any sightseeing, not that Wolverhampton is exactly the kind of place to do any sightseeing. As it happens I had taken Dan to the event, who loved it, especially building the lego models with all the other geeks. The following day was OggCamp, and although I would have liked to have attended, I had other commitments so had to pass. I think having the two events side by side though was a great idea, as it gives both events to feed off each other.

This year I'm currently only planning one conference, YAPC::Europe in Pisa, Italy. All being well I may get to see the tower, but as I'll be flying in and out just for the conference, I don't expect to see much more. I'm still undecided whether to submit a talk, as I'm trying to think of a suitable subject. I don't like repeating myself, but my two biggest profile Perl projects I've now covered for a couple of years (CPAN Testers and YAPC Surveys), so we'll see.

More photos to come, as I find time to get through the plethora of photos I've taken over the last year or so.