The conference had practically ended by saturday morning. Mark Shuttleworth was giving the keynote and we all sort of headed back after the keynote. I met up with Andrew Tridgell and just listened to what he was saying. I think we need more people like him who will talk quietly but will not be found wanting when the call goes out to all good men to stand up to things like Bitkeeper. He was saying some interesting about mercurial - which is an up and coming distributed version control system.
Tridge
During lunchtime was when all the hair promised during the last night's auction was sort of collected. First up was Dave Miller, whose beard was on the chopping block. It was a Win-Win because we got to look at a half-decent looking Dave and Dave got a shave for free.
Rusty showed up with his own razor and sort of lived up to - If you gotta get something done right, do it yourself. The world has never seen Rusty without his mush since he was sixteen - except for that vacation where he destroyed all evidence by dropping the camera into sixteen feet of water. Maddog was keen to capitalize on the photo opportunity.
Rusty does the job and walks around with a new mush. I remember hearing Jeff yell out now you look even more like a pornstar as soon as Rusty put on the falsie.
Jeff Waugh was up next. I don't think I need words to explain the story below. Reminds me too much of cartoon story boards. Well, provided you know the characters in the story here - Jeff & Pia Waugh supported by Maddog.
Biggest thing post lunch was the fact that I dropped my HDD and had to go through some mental anguish. Then attended the panel discussion which essentially had a small flame war about Mac OS X vs FOSS. The future of the desktop seems to have been hijacked mid-way by OS X and well seeded in the geek community by Apple. Tridgell replied with "maybe you shouldn't pick your software by merely quality alone".
Then the next year plans were announced and a few jokes by the organizers - like the Jeff and Pia Smith reference (Pia Smith is now Pia Waugh) and the Scary bald man Jeff.
I then headed out to dinner with the gang. Noticed that Rhys's jacket had the remanents of whatever was Oracle's Power Browser project.
Then came the time to say good bye. Even those who were staying in New Zealand were headed out onto the road. Unicol was feeling rather empty - and the drained feeling that a conference brings when all the adrenaline dies down.
I still had a day left to see around Dunedin, but you'll have to wait for the post - I have so much to write about.
--Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in New Zealand.
posted at: 17:44 | path: /conferences | permalink |