Prepping for OSCON
Well, in just over a week I’ll be going to Portland, Oregon to attend my very first OSCON. My boss usually goes, and since I got staff at CIS too late last year, I didn’t have a chance to go to any conferences.
OSCON, for those unfamiliar with it, is the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. From what I can tell, this seems to be the biggest coding convention on this side of the planet - especially the one that seems to emphasize open source development to the extreme. I like the attitude of open source developers, and hope to network a lot at the event. I’m planning on bringing all of my business cards to hand out, and plan to have my little Rolodex pocket holder available to stuff everyone else’s in there. I met a lot of cool and nice people at the last conference I went to (cPanel Traning Conference - Houston, TX), and got their business cards. We’ve stayed in touch since then.
My fiance, Melissa, is coming with me. It was a last-minute decision, but one I hope she’ll thoroughly enjoy. I’ll be in sessions all day most days, and some evenings I’ll be networking with people, but agree that my life has been far to hectic lately, so we plan to take a few evenings to go do some cool things such as visit the Japanese Gardens up there, in addition to the International Rose Test Garden and other things such as the Oregon Zoo, etc. During the day she’ll be meandering probably in the Hotel and surrounding Portland area, enjoying herself. For anyone else interested in a list of other things / places you might find her at, check out the following page.
My camera will be coming with me, so be on the lookout and if you don’t like to be shot, don’t be in range of my viewfinder, else bring that wonderful smile of yours. I’ll be blending in with the crowd, for the most part.
