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by Alan Williamson.
Original Post: Holland Open Source Conference; view from the floor
Feed Title: Technical @ alan.blog-city.com
Feed URL: http://www.ibm.com/us/en/
Feed Description: (Technical) the rants of a java developer trapped in the body of a java developer!
I am sitting here in the EasyInternetCafe in the middle of Amsterdam (because the hotel access is so god damn expensive and I refuse to fund the hotels bandwidth) reflecting on what has been a busy day at the conference which started off great and never failed to deliver.
The interesting format here is that no one person is given anymore than 20 minutes to pontificate about anything; myself included! Even the keynotes, they squeeze 4 speakers into one 2 hour slot complete with question/answer sessions for each one. It is format that while a little frustrating for speakers, is a joy to the audience who don't get an opportunity to be bored by the current speaker. Scott Handy (from IBM) opened the conference with his keynote and on his slides he noted they purchased Gluecode for the skills, driving home the point that IBM supports open source in many different ways.
My talk went okay, feeling rushed it took me a wee while to get into my stride. The primary reason for this was I was suddenly very aware of my own voice and wanted to make sure my english came over as clear and precise as possible to a largely European audience. I was paying to much attention to how I spoke and not about what I spoke that I made a goof and ended up being 'heckled' from the floor. LOL.Â
I attributed a quote to Eric Raymond when it was Richard Stallman and as soon as I said it I knew I made a blunder, but before I could compose and correct, I was heckled! My first heckle. Fortunately that was towards the start of the talk and the rest of it went without incident as I gave up on thinking about how I sounded and more on what I said. Spoke to a number of people afterwards and it was good to be quoted by others in their talks.
The panel in the evening went very well with the moderator doing a great job in keep in the conversation flowing without any interuptions. I have all their names back in my hotel room and when I credit them properly online I want to make sure I get their names correct; they deserve the proper recognition for a job well done.
One final note I'd like to make about this conference compared to the OSBC in San Francisco earlier in the year. At the OSBC everyone was drinking the open source kool aid; all talks and discussions where preaching to the choir with very little interesting debate. Over here at the Holland Conference I am coming up against 'doubters' that have yet to be convinced. The talks from the European speakers where very much putting a real world spin on things, not glossing over any of the cracks pretending they aren't problems. I find this wonderfully refreshing; makes for a more lively and interesting discussion.
A very good conference and would highly recommend it to anyone who is considering sticking it on their calendar next year.
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