GUADEC followup

Wowzers, what a great time! Was intending to write about each day individually, but that’s certainly out of the question now. GUADEC was a great experience and I’m hooked on the community! A big thanks to everyone who helped put GUADEC ’07 together.

My favorite bits:

• Staying at the hostel. It was a helluva long walk and really sucked on the rainy days, but it was a new experience. Forced random strangers to hang out and I met some cool people. Wish I would’ve gotten the names of the two guys running the hostel; they were very laid back.
• There were some killer keynotes; most importantly:
  • Alex’s presentation of PyroDesktop. I don’t take much stock in the comments of folks who don’t like this technology. It’s something we’ve never seen before, and I think the coolest part is the potential to draw a new crowd of developers to the desktop! Alex, Chris & company: keep up the good work!
  • Havoc and Bryan’s presentation of the Gnome Online Desktop. Super sweet guys. Everyone loves integration. Now, lets see it happen!
  • Doc Searls’ closing keynote. Doc is a funny man. “Now bend over and give me some content!”
• And my favorite sessions:
  • Larry’s presentation of F-Spot and the next wave of development. F-Spot rocks!
  • Telepathy and Tubes. You’ve heard the raves of others; I don’t need to spell it out here.
  • Joe’s presentation on Beagle and metadata joyfulness. Joe is a funny man.
  • Kudos to Jimmy K for holding his own during his talk on the new main menu development.
  • The Geodata standards project — creating a totally free database of mapping information.  Cool!
• The Walkabout.  What a great bar.

Many thanks to all the folks who made going out and drinking absolutely hilarious, including Gabriel, Aaron, Michael, Aiden, Rodney, Toms, any anyone else I’ve missed!