Last night's dinner was a high point of the conference for me. I got to sit across from Scott Gray of the O'Reilly School of Technology, over excellent food, cabernet from his county, talking constructivism versus objectivism. He expressed sincere admiration for Andre's Crunchy project and talk. As the six of us conversed, the hotel dimmed its lights to mark Earth Hour, a global event. Scott is in the Jerry Uhl lineage (Urbana-Champaign) and following a productive trajectory.
My thanks to Steve, PSF chair, for making this introduction. I also finally got to meet the elusive (to me) Julie Steele of O'Reilly. We compared notes on Newark, NJ briefly (she likes it there).
To my right was Ben Bangert inventor of hellanzb, a principal Pylons developer etc. His take on the afternoon's ORM panel discussion was helpful to me. I enjoy clear expressions of bias (e.g. from Leonard also).
Later, I was enabled to crash a party at a nearby hotel. The PSF legal counsel and I eyed the xBox guitars but I didn't play until later (easy level, higher than beginner) opposite a real pro, and thanks to some Black Label.
We had lots of connections to Iceland in that room. Insofar as I was able to decipher the chatter, we were multi-user game programmers with rather vast followings. CCP is one of the major league players.
As CSN CMO, I was pleased to learn more about Mochi as well.
Ian Benson, Steve Holden and I are planning to brave the light snow and visit Starting with the Universe. I've got my bag parked at the hotel so I might hop off the El (train) and onto the O'Hare shuttle, looking forward returning to PDX.
