OSCON 2008, the Year of the Butterfly

Writing this is my way of remembering my first OSCON. It’s also a good way of taking a break from the research I’m doing into the next web typography post. I’m also a little frazzled by moving house, and a recent period of sleep depravation after my eldest son’s operation. This is my therapy.

The stage

Sometime in the very early hours of Monday 21st July, after leaving New York nine hours earlier and being tortured by JetBlue and JFK, Chris and I arrived at the Doubletree in Portland. It was balmy. After the tropical heat of New York, to be cool was a treat.

The next morning I got chance to explore a little. The center of Portland is a good place. The free tram is a great idea. Tree-lined avenues break up what would otherwise be a sterile business district into human-friendly spaces. You can walk around the city. That might sound like a strange statement to make but, in my experience of the States so far, a walkable city is exceptional enough to highlight. OSCON takes place for a week at the Oregon Convention Center which sits on the Willamette River’s east bank. A pair of glass pyramids and spires call the faithful to prayer from above the main entrance. Architectural comparisons with cathedrals and palaces are hard to resist. The pyramids reminded me of the Louvre in miniature. On closer look, the spires almost seem like an afterthought. OSCON only took up the south end of the centre. In the eery quiet of the other empty concourses a dragon boat and pendulum wait in patient suspense for admiring glances.

Players & acts

I’m averse to some of the more negative aspects of professional conferences. Sometimes, I get a sense of some people’s innate self-consciousness that can go one of two ways in the social mælstrom: Quiet humility that should be treasured, or competitive haughtiness attempting to mask insecurity. The latter is suboptimal. OSCON has almost none of it. Thanks to Chris, from the moment I stepped through the door, to the last night, I seemed to meet a whole bunch of people who were comfortable in their own skin, and with their own proclivities. They even accepted mine. There’s nothing so pleasant than having good things to say about people one meets. These of just a few of the characters:

The mighty Wez Furlong was possibly the busiest man at OSCON, giving three talks, and sharing his PHP / Cocoa explorations with the world. His obscure cultural reference library is almost as smart as his code, which is saying something. Andrei Zmievski has rightly been called the social director of OSCON before now. He has a unique ability to organise dispersed techies into a night out, and find the best food and drink. Like Wez, he’s also a core developer of PHP; multi-talented like most of the folks I met.

It was great to meet the Funkatron (Ed Finkler) too; security dude, publisher of a rather fine blog, and Spaz developer (for all of the Twitter fans out there). The Chay, first name Terry, arrived late during a great Tuesday evening at the Doug Fir. Another person who, like Ed, I’d only known via the Metaverse before. Watching Terry in live debate around Rails and PHP was a gift, flavoured with some choice vitriol, and prepended with some Physics.

Ben Ramsey also contributed his fair share of choice phrases to that particular evening, too. He went from custard to goats to communism, all within the space of two mis-interpretations, and the unique Ramsey filter that emerges to great effect when the sun goes down. Elizabeth Naramore of PHP Women and the forthcoming PHP Appalachia conference also kept me company one Thursday night in the Vault. We put the world to rights, and lamented the joy and pain of younglings. The Vault was also the place of more Ramsey mayhem and obscure cocktails. They included a strange take on the Mojito with lemon grass, a favourite of the beatific Marcus Boerger of Google.

The person who starred in my best picture of OSCON, was security and PHP guru, Damien Seguy. On a mis-guided first attempt to find Mint, the best restaurant in Portland (truly), Damien brought his elephant along. Arguably, his elephant had more directional smarts than us that night. I visited Mint three times during OSCON. Andrei took us there the first time (hence his accolade for finding good food.) Chris and I also dragged his royal amusing contrariness, Theo Schlossnagle there as he flew into town, assaulted the world with his brain (and huge velcro-covered lens) then departed. The third visit topped them all with an en-mass invasion after a glorious afternoon at Brewfest on the Friday. Apart from the strange Brewfest wave of sound — a cheer that started nowhere and undulated around the tents — and the excellent beer, the evian-esque gigantic atomiser was a person favourite. Who would of thought to put an urgency-inducing sprinkler system just before the queue for the loo?

I also got to spend a bit of time on Friday with those excellent equestrians and technical authors, Luke Welling and Laura Thompson of OmniTI and Mozilla, respectively. Earlier that day, Luke and I shared the affirming experience of donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For me, this was partly to support the EFF’s help for people like Luke, who’s currently dealing with a ridiculous attempt by confirmed spammer, Jim Mirkalami, to sue Luke after he re-published information on his blog that was already in the public domain. Anyway, we got the tshirt, and it was good. After such great company, great food, and drinks, Mint is definitely in my top two Stateside restaurants so far, along with Gen in Brooklyn (it has incredible Japanese-Rastafari sushi). Later that night, Chris and I said a fond farewell to Mint, jumped in a cab and headed to the airport via the Doubletree to soar back to Brooklyn on the red eye. An apt name, for sleep was not forthcoming. After a few hours rest in Chris’s place on Saturday morning, I dragged my bags into town for present shopping. I fell into another flight that evening and landed back in Bristol and the beautiful embrace of my tribe on Sunday morning. Knackered is an understatement. Then we moved house four days later.

Apropos

If this post is packed with names, that’s because OSCON was all about the people for me. I haven’t mentioned everyone I met (just those I spent most time with), and didn’t manage to attend many talks, but the atmosphere alone was worth the trip. Chris Shiflett and I gave a talk on experience-driven development which took place on Thursday. A good thing, because some of our best ideas dropped into slides on Wednesday afternoon. It was fun, but still a little raw in its first outing. We got some great feedback—almost all positive—so hopefully it will have more meat and equal amounts of fun the next time around.

OSCON was a blast. Here’s my OSCON ’08 Flickr photoset if you’d like to see a bit more. It was superbly organised, at a great venue, with some of the best developers in the world exchanging mental energy for a conference pass. Details make big ripples when it comes to conferences. Details like the fantastic help of Shirley Bailes — O’Reilly’s conference speaker manager — who even offered to send me this year’s butterfly t-shirt after I forgot to grab one while I was there. If you wondered at the title of this post, there’s your answer. I only met a handful of people out of the three thousand or so who attended, but they made it great for me. I encourage everyone to consider going in years to come. With luck, I’ll see you next year!