“Apache Week had the pleasure of visiting Monterey in July to
report on the 4th O’Reilly Open Source Software Convention. This
seemed like the ideal assignment; we get to fly to California in
July, avoiding the British weather, and spend a week right on the
West Coast just a few hours south of the Bay Area. That was the
plan, but the reality started to kick in on our drive down the
coast on Sunday to the conference centre when it was cold, windy,
and raining. The conference was being held in the Monterey
conference centre, an impressive building joined to two hotels. We
knew instantly that we had the right building as whilst registering
we were approached by a fellow attendee who explained how he had
worked out spoofing the Internet hotel connections to avoid paying
for them.”
“7.45am on Monday morning is not my most favourite time of the
week, and it didn’t help that we were greeted with the sight of
over a thousand tutorial delegates jostling for seats to eat the
provided breakfast. The first two days of the conference were
dedicated to longer tutorial sessions, each one scheduled for 3.5
hours allowing the presenters to really get into the depths of
their chosen subject. With 13 simultaneous tutorial sessions on
the first day, and only two Apache Week staff, we found it really
hard to choose between them. Other delegates we spoke to were
similarly overwhelmed by the choice.“