I promised that I would give my thoughts on REAL World 2005, didn't I? I realize this is a litle late, but I still feel like blogging about it.
I wasn't looking forward to REAL World nearly as much this year as I was last year. Mostly because I just didn't have the time to prepare like before. With REALbasic 2005 development chugging along, and a lot of pressure to get things going quickly, I've been spending a lot of hours at work. In fact, since late Jan, I think I've worked almost 100 extra hours (which will come in handy while I'm building my house, so I don't mind toooo much) -- so I've been feeling a bit burnt out.
However, I was looking forward to seeing users there. It's so nice to be able to meet people who use the product because I get to put faces with names (from the lists, here, and message boards) as well as the fact that I can sit down and hear about all the cool things that people make with RB. So I was pretty stoked about that. Also, it was a mini-vacation in that I didn't have to code for three days. :-P
I spent the morning on Wed sitting at the office, coding away on 2005b2 to try to fix some last minute issues for the keynote. Got them all fixed too, but Geoff skipped those parts that night. :-P At about noon, we started loading my truck down with things to take oer to the convention center. Mike and I headed over to Taco Bell after we got the truck filled, grabbed some food, and went downtown to eat it. We sat out in front of the center (on Ceaser Chavez) and ate our food in the gorgeous 75 degree, sunny weather -- everyone else ate inside at Taco Bell because they're crazy.
After everyone was done eating, we headed into the loading docks and started unloading all the stuff. Around 4pm or so, Joe and Mars got into the center -- it was nice to see them again. I had just finished packing all those damn tote bags for Janet. I filled them with all the little goodies. :-P
The keynote itself started around 6, and it was long and boring (no offense to Geoff). There were some interesting parts to it. I especially loved the DARPA challenge video -- that was awesome! But quite frankly, I have no interest in Swordfish and so that entire part of the talk was boring for me (and I've heard about the vision of the company enough as well. lol). I was a little peeved to see that all the work I had done earlier in the week for Geoff's keynote was completely thrown out. He was going to show RB 2005 being built in RB 2005. He was also going to show RB 2005 running on Linux. He didn't even mention that RB 2005 was going to be sold on Linux! Bleh.
We had the dinner afterwards, and that was cool. I sat around and BSed with people, but mostly those from work. :-P I liked the fact that we had a sit-down dinner this year instead of standing up at those table last year. Mostly because I had been chasing all day long, and so sitting down was a nice idea. However, I thought the food last year was better. I'm a sucker for good Swedish meatballs.
I got up a little late on Thursday, and ended up at the center around 9:30am. But it was no big deal because I didn't speak until the afternoon. So I spent most of the morning sitting around, talking with users about different things. A lot of people had networking questions again this year (no surprises there) and were wondering if I had any tricks up my sleeve for RB 2005 with regards to networking. I also got asked a ton of serial questions this year, which was a change from last year (but not entirely unexpected either). The afternoon sucked. Janet, being the lovely, caring, mean person that she is, scheduled my three talks back-to-back-to-back. In different rooms. My talks went well (I think, but I haven't seen the feedback for them yet) and most of the afternoon was a blur.
We had the dinner that night, and announced winners for the design awards. That was fun -- I sat around and BSed with more people there as well. But I'd say the highlight of my day was going out for a beer with Will, Gerrard, and a few other people. That was fun! Sorry I couldn't stay longer though -- I was just beat. I got home around midnight, fell face first into bed and slept straight thru till 9am on Friday (oops, late again!). Next year I'll be sure to drink more (both in terms of volume and time, I should go out both nights next year).
Friday was much of the same. I was relieved that I didn't have to do any more talks (no one thought I was good enough for a repeat session, yay!), mostly because 1) I didn't want to give another talk, and 2) I could barely talk from talking all day on Thur. So I spent the entire day Friday talking with users again about different things. It was a blast! By the time we had to start tearing things down, I was sad because I really do enjoy REAL World. But I had to get going because Lis and I were heading down to Houston that night for my birthday/Easter. I went out to dinner with Joe, Cortis and William though -- that was nice. It was good seeing Cortis again.
I am hoping that next year's REAL World has some changes. I doubt some of them will happen, and I am hopeful that others will. I would love it if we could produce DVDs of the sessions because then there would be no repeat sessions and people wouldn't have to worry about missing a session. I doubt this will happen because the DVDs would end up being about 200$ per person. I would love it if the conference was extended by another day (and didn't coincide with a holiday -- how lame was that?). I think a lot of people would get more out of it, and I am just a sucker for talking to users. :-P I'd like to see the conference held in a hotel instead of the convention center. We take up like 1% of the center, and I think we could save money by not holding it there. Hotels have conference rooms usually, so I think that would work out. I'd like to see some things planned for the evenings for going out on the town. Most people aren't from Austin and so they have no idea where to go or what to do aside from wander down to 6th St. I'd also like to see more people there next year. I think there were about 130 people who came this year, but it'd be nice to see more like 200-300 people. Things like that.
I'm interested to see the feedback forms to find out how people liked my talks. They were the same talks from last year (only updated slightly), so part of me feels kind of bad for not having new talks. But then again, the thought was that people missed my session last year and so they'd want to see it this year, so it doesn't matter if I had a whole new talk or not. Next year I'd like to do a talk about Windows user interface design (and just how to deploy to Windows in general), see more talks about porting from VB, and focus a bit more on the Windows side of things. I was more than a bit annoyed at the two people from Apple giving talks this year when we didn't have anyone from Microsoft, Novel or RedHat talking...
For those of you who read my blog and also were at REAL World -- what were your impressions from the conference?
Well, I'll be holding you to that more drinking part. That was a blast. And this time we will try not to corner you. That must have been scarey :)
Bah! You guys didn't scare me one bit -- I was just out of it from all the events. I'm looking forward to drinking again though! Hopefully for longer. ;-)
I would have loved to come :-(. I'm hoping next time it's July or August while we're traveling. Maybe I could convince the parents to go to Texas for a few days while we're camping.
-- SirG3
Hopefully you can make it next year. :-)
I'll tell you one reason I don't ever intend on going: I have a pretty good feeling that I'd end up wondering around by myself, attending sessions by myself and going out afteward by myself.
I don't have a name in the RB community. I do however observe quite a bit as I visit this blog as well as many others. I also read most of the NUG. I know who the "name" people are, and I see how they all seem to congregate at this convention. I get the feeling it would be quite similar to the mornonic Mensa meeting I attended. A number of "elites" congregating, swapping stories and generally deriding those in attendance who they do not know.
Until I read a post from a "no-name" that praises the comraderie and inclusiveness of all in attendance, I'll refrain from attending.
Well, I may not be a "no-namer", but I can tell you that out of the people I hung out with for any amount of time at the convention, I only recognized a handful of names. Will, Gerard and I went out for drinks. And I talked with Norman Palardy and Dave Woolridge for a little bit. There were a few other people I talked to for 10 minutes at a time as well.
But I also sat around BSing with a lot of very nice people who's names I've never even seen before. In fact, at the awards dinner, I ended up sitting at a table of about six people who I've never seen post on the lists, and one of them came along for drinks with us that night (Derek Lane-Smith). While there may be some small cliques, I don't think you'll have any troubles meeting people to swap stories with.
People are free to correct me if I'm wrong (my views may be skewed), but I don't recall seeing anyone who just kinda hung out by themselves at the conference. I think it's kind of tough to do that simply because everyone has something in common there. Personally, I'd love to see little placards at the tables for different categories of interest (like networking, gaming, databases, mac zealotry, etc) to make it even easier for people to congregate.
That would be a great idea (placards).
Obviously I could be very wrong. It's just that all I keep reading are these posts about how they hung out with so and so.
I never expected any of the actual RB guys to separate themselves from the crowd. You guys are just too in demand, I'm sure. Plus your participation in the NUG's is evidence you all really are concerned with the community.
Maybe it's just that I know of no one, who actually writes in RB, to talk into going with me.
I know Joe works remotely in CA, but what about Mars and Cortis? You said "it was good to see" them - do they not work in your office? Just a little confused!
My impression, as a first-year attendee, after using RB for about two years, is that the one-hour sessions rarely have enough time to delve deeper into a subject than I'm already familiar.
I even skipped the intro to XML, but attended the Advanced XML, in order to learn XPath and XSLT. While XPath was covered, XSLT got only about 5-10 minutes, which wasn't nearly enough. But then, XML, XPath, and XSLT fill thick books all by themselves, which is probably the route I'll have to go.
Not having power strips available was odd, given the prevalence of laptop ownership among the attendees. My iBook was dead by noon each day as a result.
And there were several sessions which either didn't have any printed material available, or were not placed near the back of the room for late arrivals.
Oh, and during one lunch, I went to the RB table to ask a technical question, but was turned away because they were having a meeting. Good thing everyone was accessable after the awards dinner.
I don't regret going, and I won't say I'll never attend again, but I didn't get as much out of it as I'd hoped.
@Charlie -- Joe and Mars work remote (as will I at the beginning of next month)). Cortis no longer works for us, he left around late Nov to persue other adventures.
@Michael -- I agree about an hour not being enough. Imagine trying to prepare a session on "networking" that appeases all people when you're given an hour! I'd like to see tracks (beginner, intermediate, advanced) on the topics, and an extra day or two for the conference just so the topics get covered better. It's something that's come up in the past, and it boils down to "how much do people really want?", since it costs a fair chunk of money to extend the conference. For example, I heard that making the conference another day longer would bump the cost per person up almost by half. Now add on DVDs at about 150$ a person. The costs just add up, and we don't want to make things so expensive as to prohibit people from coming.
About the power strips -- yeah, that'd be a good thing. We didn't have them last year either, but then again, there were less laptops last year. I'll email that suggestion to Janet.
About no printed materials, that was something we just tried out this year. Last year had no printed goodies for people. I like having the printed stuff, but I think it'd make more sense to have a little stand at the doorway and make people pick them up as they walk in. It's a pain trying to make sure everyone gets one, and it cuts into the talk time. But it's the first year we tried having them, so I'm not surprised it wasn't as smooth as possible.
There was a meeting during lunch? Heck, there was an RB table? Ususally it was only one or two people from RS at a table (except for the first night, that one we all kinda clumped together). I don't think I ever sat with the same people twice during lunches and dinner. Did you get your technical question answered though?
I mentioned it at the 'feedback session' but in response to Steve's concerns - I think that having the conference in a Hotel would allay the possibility of not meeting people. While it is a good point that one would miss a lot by not going down to 6th street it does seem rather daunting to do so alone. Every conference that I've attended in a Hotel was 'warmer' and more friendly due to running into people in the hallway, the breakfast in the morning, but most importantly the bar in the evening. Going to 6th street might be a fun deal one night but many of us simply want to get a drink, meet a few people, and get to bed at a reasonable hour so that we can soak up all the good info the next day.
~joe
I think a hotel would be a great idea! If nothing else, to save me from having to walk the 800,000 sq ft to get to the farthest corner where we're stuck in the convention center. ;-)
@Aaron — "I’d like to see tracks (beginner, intermediate, advanced) on the topics, and an extra day or two for the conference just so the topics get covered better."
Works for me.
"It’s something that’s come up in the past, and it boils down to “how much do people really want?â€"
Until I suffer information overload. I came all the way to Austin to learn just three things; plugin development, XPath, and XSLT. I want to use XML, XPath, and XSLT to write a user-accessable custom reports engine, and use ServerSocket and ShowURL to display the resulting report.
"Now add on DVDs at about 150$ a person."
I'd be happy with a CD that has all the powerpoints, and the latest/greatest version of all of RB's downloads.
"About the power strips — yeah, that’d be a good thing. We didn’t have them last year either, but then again, there were less laptops last year. I’ll email that suggestion to Janet."
We've been providing power strips for our User's Group attendees for the last three years.
We also provide a "technical support" session after our keynote where we encourage people to bring their laptops and give hands-on one-on-one technical support.
Thus far though, we have not provided internet access of any kind because the hotels charge and arm and a leg for it.
"I like having the printed stuff, but I think it’d make more sense to have a little stand at the doorway and make people pick them up as they walk in."
I'd rather have all of them on a CD. Then, I'd have the powerpoints for not only the sessions I'm attending, but for those I couldn't attend but wanted to due to scheduling conflicts.
"There was a meeting during lunch? Heck, there was an RB table?"
Yup, it was the table right by the door as you walk in.
"Did you get your technical question answered though?"
No. It was a plugin implementation question regarding my plugin function prototypes not being auto-displayed by RB in the editor. Had it been anything more serious than that, I would have waited until the meeting was over.
Hey! I'm not mean at all. I'm as loveable and caring as a carebear. HeeHee. all of the suggestions I read here are in my notes for next years REAL World which is already in the making.
Thanks for snagging the suggestions darlin!