use Perl

After Damian's talk, I trundled off while the others went to dinner. I collected my family from the hotel and we all bowled back to the student association building (the William Shatner building, as every McGill student will proudly tell you) and ate dinner. We were able to sit at the table of Abigail, Mark-Jason Dominus, and Damian Conway, so the dinner conversation was not boring.

However, my family had not had a good day. They'd tried to visit some riverside attraction and had been trapped underground by some kind of maintenance. It was blistering hot and the 2 year old boy did not react well to the environment. Everyone was tired and frazzled, and after dinner they went home to recover.

I BOFfed around a little, but mostly spoke to people about the projects I'd outlined in the Perl Apprenticeship talk, and people who want to write books. There are going to be some excellent books coming down the pike!

After the BOFs, a bunch of us wandered to a restaurant on a pedestrian mall for drinks and snacks. I remember Kevin Lenzo, Lucs (one of the YAPC organizers), Pudge, Brent Michalski, Abigail, my sister, and about six other people whose names two Guinnesses and the large bowl of mussels I had have erased.

We talked for a while about the differences between The Perl Conference and YAPC. Abigail has a philosophical and moral objection to attending conferences that end up costing you multiple thousands of dollars once registration, tutorials, flights, and accomodation are taken into account. I did my best to explain that TPC is morning to night immersion--we provide breakfast, lunch, dinner, parties into the night, financial assistance for some speakers and community leaders who otherwise couldn't afford to attend, kid entertainment, professional A/V, full-time registration crews, .... You do get a lot for your money--anyone who thinks O'Reilly's rolling in money thanks to TPC needs their head read!

The mention of TPC triggered a discussion of the upcoming Craig Mundie vs Open Source debate, and we talked about licenses and how several of Microsoft's products are based (after several levels of reselling) on open source products. We also heard about Kevin Lenzo's company's business model--very good stuff. That's a smart boy! (we knew that)

And so at 11 I went back to the hotel and slept. Another busy YAPC day.

--Nat