perlmeditation
mandog
<p>Since I have to do a trip report anyway...</p>
<p><a href="http://yapc.org/America/">YAPC::NA </a> was well worth the cash and <a href="http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.cfm?lesson=EM51">opportunity cost</a>. </p>
<p>It was cheap, I increased my knowledge, people were friendly and helpful, I got to observe a [merlyn|celeb] or three. The imperfections in the conference and my approach to it were mostly minor. </p>
<p>It was really <b>cheap.</b> $85 for three days of seminars with lunch, coffee and afternoon cookies. The hotel was $65 per night with a little fridge, a microwave, a swimming pool, a hot tub, free breakfast, free wireless access (bring your own NIC) and as many people as we could fit in the room. (we did 4) </p>
<p>A clever [186264|co-worker] raises the possibility that I might have learned more by locking myself in a room for 4 days with the <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pperl3/">camel</a>. However, it is nice to be able to ask questions of a person. I've read through the camel a few times. I did not know there was a difference between \1 and $1 inside a regular expression, before dropping in on [169744|Abigail's] excellent session.</p>
<p>The conference organizers did a good job picking people to to speak about their modules. I might not otherwise have heard of <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=regex%3A%3ACommon&mode=all">Regexp::Common </a> or <a href="http://search.cpan.org/author/MARKOV/Mail-Box-2.042/Mail/Box-Overview.pod">Mail::Box</a> or <a href="http://search.cpan.org/author/INGY/CGI-Kwiki-0.17/lib/CGI/Kwiki.pm">CGI::Kwiki</a>
<p>I also learned a few tricks about conferences in general. I didn't miss a goodie bag or even pre-printed notes for the presentations. The listserv had some useful info, did a good job of getting people friendly before the conference started and (once I started diverting it to its own folder) wasn't too distracting. The lightning talks were great and a great novelty. Many people got a lot of useful info into 6 minutes. </p>
<p> Probably the most useful thing I learned was that it takes [merlyn] about 35 hours of instruction to cover the material in <a href="http://www.comdex.com/">Learning Perl</a> about 24 hours to cover the material in <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lrnperlorm/"> Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules </a> and that it takes him about a day to prepare an hour of instruction. I won't be doing a free course for our volunteers this summer, but at least I have an idea of how long it takes to get people a little proficient with Perl </p>
<p>I was surprised at how friendly folks were. The whole thing felt a lot more like a <a href="http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_33898.asp">fan</a> con than <a href="http://www.comdex.com/">Comdex</a> There wasn't a breakfast where I didn't have a decent conversation with a new person. I've been to less friendly conferences run by organizations with the word community in their name. </P>
<p> My big beef was that many of the presenters had bad unreadable slides with huge indigestible chunks of info. Your average bat has better vision than me but if I have 20/70 vision and can't see stuff when I'm sitting on the floor 4 feet away from the screen the odds are good that folks with normal vision won't see the slides in the back of a the room, You'd think if somebody had been presenting for decades, they might take a trip to the back of the room to check if their slides were readable. </p>
<p> My personal regret was that I didn't spend any time on the <a href="http://yapc.kwiki.org/">Kwiki</a> before tonight. </p>
<BR><BR><A HREF=mailto:dan@ltc.org>email: mandog</A>