bars. Yum.
And yes, the actual content of
the Developer
Relations Conference has been not only informative, but in
some cases, downright inspiring, especially the presentation from the
dude from O’Reilly titled Developers Just Want to Have Fun. I’ve been
taking notes for all the sessions I’ve managed to catch and will post
them once I’ve formatted and cleaned them up a bit.
So far, the Evans Data Corporation’s Developer Relations Conference has been quite good — information-rich presentations delivered by good speakers to a interesting and varied crowd — but I’ll save all the techie/marketing stuff for the technical blog, The Farm. I’m going to report on the more touchy-feely stuff here so as not to bore my not-so-technical readers to tears.
Rather than have lunch in some stuffy hotel conference dining room, they herded us outside to this lovely tent adjoining the hotel. In case you were wondering, it’s springlike (about 14 degrees C) and sunny in San Francisco today. Here’s a photo of the tent:
I was expecting the standard salad-chicken-vanilla cake fare, but was pleasantly surprised by what we actually got:
This is far better than any other conference fare I’ve ever been served. Mind you, I’m typically at developer cons, and food isn’t often high on the priority list, other than having plenty. I’m sure that “suitier” conferences have food on this level or better, but I’m a grateful geek for getting the “Food Network” treatment here. I salute Evans Data with a filet mignon on a flaming sword for the lunch.
I’m currently sitting in a seminar at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in the Argent Hotel in downtown San Francisco. It’s a developer relations conference rather than a developer conference, which means that the event isn’t the “sausage party” to which I have become accustomed, but rather one with a more even male-female ratio.
The Windows/Mac ratio is still heavily Redmond-skewed. Until just now, I thought I was the only guy with a Mac laptop in attendance.
Noting this, I turned to Ross and said, “See? Only Mac in the house. I’ve just established myself as the rebel.”
“No,” he replied without skipping a beat, “you’ve established yourself as bait.”
I’ve set this post to appear
right about the time our plane takes off for San Francisco. For those
of you who’ll be in the San Francisco area tonight, Boss Ross, my wife Wendy and I will be
holding a dinner meetup at 21st Amendment (563
2nd Street) at 7 p.m.. It’s an open invitation to come hang
out with us — anyone can come!
February is “Strong
Beer Month” at 21st Amendment, where they’ll be featuring these beers,
all of which boast 8.5% alcohol by volume or
more:
Tripel
I.P.A.
Ale
Wine
Stout
Yes, we know that it’s probably insane to
schedule such a gathering timed for right about when the Superbowl will
end, but it was the only day we could hold it. We hope you can make it
there!
On Monday and Tuesday, Ross and I will be at
the Evans Data
Corporation’s Developer Relations Conference, where we’ll be
learning the tricks of the trade of evangelizing to developers. This
will be only the second year that this conference has been held, and it
promises to be interesting. I’ll be taking copious notes and blogging
the event — watch this space for details.
For more details, see here.
[via AKMA] I’m going to be at the Evans Data Corporation’s Developer Relations Conference in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday, which means that it’s very likely that I will have to sit through who-knows-how-many PowerPoint presentations. Perhaps I should bring along a USB key loaded with Gary Turner’s slide for derailing PowerPoint presentations, pictured below:
Gary writes:
This should create the required disturbance in the PowerPoint
forcefield and, with a little luck, force them to let go of the wheel
and actually talk to you as humans without the crutch of 78 slides to make a point that should take only 3.
I’ve written about one of the unintended consequences of PowerPoint before in an entry titled The Breakup Style of PowerPoint, from which David Byrne (yup, the Talking Heads guy) borrowed for his presentation. Check it out!
(Non-Canadian readers: the guy in the right panels is incoming Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who will form a minority government.)
