The last full day of OSCON was today and tomorrow everything wraps up around noon and the geeks go back to their daily lives. While there's been a multitude of things learned this trip I'm ready to get back home and see the family.
Today I caught a few database discussions, one of which was presented by the creator of SQLite (Richard Hipp) while some of the big guys from Postgres and MySQL sat in the audience. The presentation was outstanding and to see representative of the two major OpenSource database engines in the same room casually talking about what they can or can't do and not trying to one up each other shows how great the community is.
There was a presentation by Ben Trott, the creator of Movable Type, on Data::ObjectDriver which may be something we need to look at in preference to Class::DBI. I think every presentation by the Six Apart staff talked about how they and the things they do both rock and suck. To me this is a great aspect to point out and one that few people are willing to confront. Every application, site, and idea in general out there has things they can do better and things that they are doing well. In the ever evolving internet realm the main idea is to keep doing well at your main focus and then to also work little by little at decreasing the amount of suckage that you have. It's impossible to cover the entire field but you need to learn how to adjust your defense depending on what comes to the plate and look to what you can do to minimize the inevitable errors that do happen, at times the adjustments help and other times they hurt and in either case you need to learn, keep your chin up and keep playing the game.
I managed to catch a talk on OpenLaszlo and speak to the guys in the booth more today. I was wrong about what their stuff actually does, but in a good way. It seems you write your code in OpenLaszlo's language (LZX) and then their compiler allows to you compile the application down to a Flash 6 piece or if you prefer an AJAX widget you can put in your page depending upon what you want to do. They hinted that there will be an announcement in the near future regarding a move to put their foot into the mobile space. When you take a look at the amazing things that are being done in Gmail, Yahoo Mail beta and even the mapping mash ups out there it's obvious interactivity is being taken to a whole new level on the web and those that don't step up are going to have some trouble getting caught up in the future. Personally I like the old hooves on cobble stones sound and while Flash and Ajax may not be the final model that sparks the switch over to automobiles it is going to happen, and more likely sooner than later.
While John and I were out and about looking for dinner I did snag a few pictures of Portland bridges and managed to eat a whole meal with chopsticks without making a complete fool of myself. I'm not someone who's traveled around the country much (or out of it at all), but of the places I have been I would say it is one of the best cities I managed to visit.
ScottK
