Firstly, I fell in love with Canberra, I’ve never been anywhere that has autumn before. The low temperatures and lack of humidity were great.
The highlights for me were Andrew Morton, Ted Ts’o and Eben Moglen. Some of my photos are up.
The Brisbane Consortium made a valiant, but somewhat late bid for the t-shirt this year; we were quickly routed.
I was disapointed by some aspects of the conference. It seems as though the organisers were under some threat of illicit entry, and they responded to this by having fairly aggressive name badge checking at entry and exit of venues. This gave the conference a very different feel to previous conferences, and was unwelcome; a more subtle approach would have worked just as well.
The sound system on the night of the dinner was a little lacklustre, us folks right up the back couldn’t hear a thing.
But my biggest gripes were about individual people. People not sitting as directed. People eating and drinking where they shouldn’t have been, and subsequently leaving scraps behind. People smoking where they shouldn’t have been. People not silencing mobile phones during lectures. People using laptops during presentations despite being asked not to. People just generally being loud, noisy and obnoxious.
Apart from these problems though, I enjoyed the conference immensely and can’t wait for New Zealand’s turn.
Whining, Not Dining 