So last Friday I flew out to Pittsburgh to attend my first YAPC::NA. In fact, it was my first technical conference ever really. I met many people, drank lots of coffee, explored Carnegie Mellon, and enjoyed tons of perl presentations.

A few of the presentations made an impression on me. Rather than try and discuss each of them in a single post, I’ll post my reaction over the course of the summer. The best thing about YAPC was that it sparked my imagination. I had several good ideas, one of which I may pursue further in an academic setting.

I also took lots of pictures so I tried getting my photo gallery functioning again. Unfortunately, the permalink function in NextGen seems to have changed so my pace charts probably are non-functional. Things are looking good and I hope to post some interesting pictures.

The dinner Tuesday night was the best part. The Perl Foundation bought us dinner at Heinz field. Dinner was excellent and the desserts were even better (some sort of cookie-like pie). There was a tour of the field; I stood on the endzone and sat in Hines Ward’s and Brett Keisel’s locker. Interestingly enough, I also found out that the FBI has an office in the scoreboard and use facial recognition software to find wanted criminals in the crowd (they even send them free tickets).

I also attended the Parrot Workshop and met Jerry Gay (particle) and Jeff Horwitz and Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight). I tried to convince Michael Schwern (schwern) to finally abandon ExtUtils::MakeMaker. I finally met chromatic and discussed how I feel infrequent releases of perl are what’s making it look stale. I had a long enjoyable conversation with Patrick Michaud (pm) at the auction dinner about school and life. I met Larry Wall (TimToady) which was much less dramatic than I imagined it would be. I had dinner with Matt Trout (mst) and it was surprisingly depressing. Lastly, I hung out with my good buddy fRew.

All in all, it was a good experience to socialize and network as well as craft a few really good ideas. YAPC::NA 11 will be in Columbus Ohio. Considering what I spent, I don’t think I want to go next year strickly because of the location unless my employer foots the bill. I really enjoyed attending and hope to attend a future event. Thanks to the event coordinators for all of their hard work and for the presenters for sharing their knowledge.