[rochester-pm-list] YAPC 19100

[The Whytes]

Gang,

Just a brief summary of my YAPC trip last week:

Who : Perl Mongers of the World, Larry Wall, Nate Torkington, Damian
Conway
What : Second annual "Yet another Perl Conference"
Where : Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh PA (297 Miles ~ 5 hours
from our beloved Rochester)
When : June 21-23
Why : To Rule the World

YAPC 19100 was great. Kevin Lenzo et al, put together a great conference
for all attending. It occurred in the University Center Building on CMU.
It took place across 3 contiguous, joinable,  rooms on a second floor
and a large theatre sized tiered first floor classroom complete with the
ghosts of many Chem II finals of days past. There was a "email garden"
stuffed with about 20 VA Linux fortified PC's giving access to emails ,
web etc. Kevin arranged for a "Wavelan" setup that allowed folks
equipped with laptops and wavelan wireless modem cards to participate in
real time irc. I was not laptop enabled but it appeared like folks were
getting into it. ActiveState, VA Linux, OReilly and I believe
blackboard.com sponsored much of the proceedings which included a nice
lunch every day and breaktimes with coffee, cookies, drinks. I was
impressed given the tuition.  There was also a dinner on the Thursday
made complete with a well organized "Geek trivia quiz" pitting table
against table, laptop against laptop. A Linux PC was raffled off too.
Perl Monger T shirts and hats were plentiful and on sale. Tuition
included a YAPC 19100 T-Shirt and a canvas conference bag.
The presentations ranged all the way from highly metaphorical and
spiritual sermons by Larry Wall, Jon Orwant, and Dick Hardt prompting
folks to think about Perl, its culture, its evolution, its destiny -  to
the five minute "Whats up with these Python fucks anyway" tongue in
cheek slam-a-rama.

I prefaced the conference with a day trip to "Fallingwater" which was
the 1930 Frank Lloyd Wright designed summer home of EJ Kaufmann of
Pittsburgh. (About a 1.5 hour drive away from Pitt)  Its a neat place
and got me in a real "cerebral" frame of mind primed for taking it all
in during  the 3 days that followed. As is my personal experience you
come away from these things with a firmer grasp of what you dont know
and have yet to learn. It really pointed out the vastness of what folks
are doing with Perl where the only real limit is your own creativity and
desire to learn and ( thats after 5 years of diddling with the stuff
too).

I highly recommend it for your 2001 conference top ten.

Tony

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