Conference season: Gnomedex and OSCON
Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 17 May 2006 18:35:38 GMT
I’m signed up for two conferences this summer–Gnomedex in Seattle in late June, and OSCON in Portland in late July.
I’m looking forward to both conferences. I’ve never been to Gnomedex before, but I’ve been kicking myself for missing the past two years, and decided months ago that I wouldn’t miss this year’s conference. Besides, I owe Chris for buying me dinner last summer, so the least I can do is attend his conference.
OSCON is another conference that I’ve never quite managed to attend. I drove down for ”FOSCON” last year, when the Portland Ruby Group had most of the OSCON Ruby speakers give their talks for free. I had a really good time, but I couldn’t afford to take the week off and attend the real OSCON conference. Fortunately, Google is going to have a big presence there, so I get to spend a week at the conference in exchange for spending a bit of time pretending to be a recruiter. Feel free to ask me about working for Google :-).
I have one question for readers who have been to OSCON before–it is worth staying in the official conference hotel, the Doubletree in Lloyd Center? Unfortunately, the Doubletree isn’t actually all that close to the conference center, and I’d hate to spend a lot of time commuting back and forth between the hotel and the convention center. For FOSCON last year, I stayed at the Jupiter Hotel which was really cool. I’ve also stayed at the Red Lion a block or so from the convention center. The Jupiter and Red Lion are both closer to the conference, and the Jupiter is just cooler. The big thing about conferences is that the conference sessions themselves aren’t really all that important–everything interesting really happens in the hallways and afterhours during BoFs. So, does anything actually happen at the Hotel during OSCON, or is everything at the convention center?
I did not actually stay at the conference hotel last year, so it’s possible I missed out on some things, but by and large my experience was that most of the action takes place at the convention center or in pre-arranged outings, so you don’t miss much by not staying at the conference hotel.
Additionally, it’s amazing that there really aren’t any hotels really close to the ocnvention center, so be prepared to do some walking no matter where you end up staying.
I know several folks who just try and find some place nice to stay near the tram line and use that as a means to explore more of the city… for example the other side of the river where there is quite a bit more action.
my $.02 anyway… if there are secret plans for a big google party someplace lmk though :-)
http://www.markspencer.com/
All of Bryght and lots of Drupalers stayed there last year for OSCON. It’s cheap and cheerful, centrally located and an easy walk to the free awesome Portland transit to OSCON. No need to stay at convention hotel IMHO.