oscon 2006: day 0.11

we're still not at the official conference, but have done another build, so we've rev'd to 0.11.

today is tutorials again.  i signed up for an ajax on rails one and a marketing one (how to market to people who hate marketing).

much of the same -- not what i expected as far as classroom learning. :-(

the ajax on rails was basically a launch party for the relevance guys and streamlined.  i'd seen it before from one of our local guys pointing it out to me.  but they finally released the gem and i was able to install it and play around with it.  my immediate thought was about their distribution channel (a .gem file only on their site).  the rails/ruby world is all about rubygems.  why isn't the gem on rubyforge?  makes me think that the centralized deployment isn't so easy to get stuff out there (similar to xpi as well).  it was cool though, all nice and shiny and stuff ;-)

the marketing one was supposed to be a good one.  i couldn't get into it and left early.  the first part was a commercial about a book he wrote...i think there was supposed to be some tie-in to the rest of the topic, but i felt it was a reach.  i was hoping to get out of it an understanding of how to better talk to the crowds that aren't typically fond of commercial marketing...i wasn't getting that.

tonight is the kick-off of the conference according to some of their material (but the web site indicates tomorrow -- i'm confused).  wtf is up with evening keynotes lately?  teched has theirs as well.  not a great model -- i'm tired at the end of the day, i want to have dinner and rest -- not sit in uncomfortable chairs and listen to propellerheads!  looking at the schedule, there are a series of several 15-minute keynotes this evening...i've never heard of that and eager to see how that flows, but i'm optimistic...afterall, if dick can get through 500 slides in 15 minutes, i suppose it is possible!

sidenote to all conference agenda planners: stop calling everything a keynote...you are misusing the term.  there is only one keynote...all others are general sessions!  that's the definition of a keynote: the first note to start the rest of the tune off!

tomorrow starts the real show and we'll be posting our oscamp session and trying to get it filmed and post it somewhere (relevant).

nobody has asked my 'why are you here' just yet.  another interesting observation...with all the rails/ruby love, no DHH?