ApacheCon day 1

Today was the first day of the main conference.  It mostly feels very alive this year, though that may or may not have any basis in reality.  Today was also hugely improved by the fact that we got a very good lunch, and my stomach was sufficiently recovered to enjoy it.

There were no talks today directly relevant to my work, so I thought I’d try some of the hadoop track, to learn a little about one of the ASF’s more exciting projects.  Unfortunately Owen O’Malley’s introduction in the first slot was too packed to get in, so I went elsewhere.   I did get to see Olga Natkovich’s[1] talk on pig after lunch, but that was all for hadoop.

The other interesting thing was in the business/social track.  I made a point of going to see Gianugo Rabellino’s talk: he’s a fine thinker and speaker, and always both interesting and entertaining.  I hadn’t planned to, but I stayed on to hear Paul Freemantle on WS02’s business model: fascinating because it had so many echos of my own experience in, and WS02 appear to be making a success of it.

In the early evening was keysigning.  Not so many this year: it wasn’t really adequately advertised.  But I’m certainly exchanging signatures with a few new folks, which is always useful.

[1] Natkovich?  Have patronymics gone unisex/politically correct?