A great venue

It’s lunchtime on the first day of Apachecon.  Too soon to assess the event as a whole, but I’ve formed a view on the venue.

Of all the ApacheCon venues I’ve been to, I think this week’s seems the best.  The Corinthia Hotel is about as good as any I’ve encountered, and we’re in a nice area of the great historic city of Budapest.  Amsterdam is the only past-Apachecon city that can really rival Budapest, but that was let down by a bad conference hotel.  And conversely, where I’ve encountered decent hotels, they’ve been in some altogether less pleasant or interesting locations.  At worst we’ve had poor hotels in poor locations.

Come to think of it, that’s not just Apachecon, it’s conferences of any kind, even stretching back to my days in academia.

Of course, my perception may be coloured by individual circumstances too.  I’m not doing anything stressful like giving a talk or tutorial this time.  And I may have been fortunate to have been allocated an ideal hotel room, overlooking a quiet quadrangle where I can open the window wide for fresh air without being disturbed either by outside traffic or hotel noise.

Just a couple of flies in the ointment.  The weather in bleak November isn’t entirely conducive to getting the most from Budapest.  And there are not sufficient power outlets to wield the laptop everywhere around the conference.  Even if that’s (arguably) a good thing when in a presentation, the shortage of power points applies even to the designated hacker area, which is itself not a strong point of the event.

OK, time to get back to conferring!