First, it was over too quickly. I originally was going to be able to remain calm and have fun, but a travel conflict with my partner's trip to the USA, incidentally ruined by
DHL France losing the box of books she was to take over with her, made we really want to get back before she left.
Sunday evening, I was able to spend some time with a community pillar,
Olle, the Godfather of chan_sip (or something like that). There's a huge difference between these things:
1) Reading messages on the asterisk-users mailing list
2) Waiting for oej on #asterisk IRC channel
3) hearing Olle on http://voipusersconference.org
4) seeing 1 minute Olle's presentation on http://asterisktv.com (domain name will change RSN)
and
5) Having dinner with Olle, talking about SIP, asterisk,
Digium, life and family and the relationship between these different galaxies.
Which is better?
Answer: 5 if you have decent
wine.
Day One was well-organized by
Stefan Wintermeyer with a nice pace. Beginning with his own intro, and he has a great sense of humor, then Mark Spencer's keynote, several other presenters not the least of which
Kevin Fleming,
Michelle Petrone-Fleming and the one and only Olle but wait - there's more - ending with an encrypted video phone call between Phil "PGP" Zimmermann in California and the 100+ audience in Berlin.
Even Stefan repeatedly telling Phil the cocktails were waiting for us in the other room didn't stop Phil from doing his "Columbo imitation", "oh, wait look, here's another thing, hit the 'clear' button and show what it looks like to start and stop encryption". More on
why you care about encryption here.
On to the drinks. But here are a bunch of people standing in front of the bar and nothing happening in spite of the two bartenders standing behind it. It only became obvious when some disco music started and the barmen started
juggling and tossing around cocktail shakers what was happening. It was a great ice-breaker (pun intended) and we all know what goes on in the hall is more important than what goes on at the conference. Also a terrific way to limit both over drinking and the costs since each drink took like 15 minutes to make and serve
Tuesday was hectic, my own presentation sucked because I love to improvise and I did not update my slides. Too bad since there were two cute photos of iJustine in them and I know that would have woken up a few of the snorers. What does iJustine have to do with all this? It was they way she managed to master the Internet rather than the Internet using her. At the time, I had something coherent to say, now I'm too tired from the trip home to say it as well. Anyway, the point is, what didn't kill me, I learned from.
See you next year in Berlin for an event with a new name, a new
randulo and full live and on demand video.
