Scott in a horrible mood flees to the back of the tour bus.


“We’re not sure how deep into the goof juice the Kids in the Hall were when troupe funnyman Scott Thompson started sulking and playing Portal in the back of the tour bus, but something got into Kids during this sad little gaming session.”

via kotaku

WORDCAMP PORTLAND



OK… so let’s talk about what I learned this weekend at Wordcamp Portland.

1. Aaron Hockley and the OurPDX crew know how to put on a conference. They all worked really hard and hosted a stellar event. My wholehearted thanks goes out to them for putting this together in their spare time, and for allowing me to speak.

2. Writing a conference presentation takes longer than you think. A LOT LONGER than you think. Next time I speak I will not procrastinate so heavily. I spent most of the day in the back trying to finish my presentation.

3. When out in the world… always keep your eyes on your sunglasses. I lost+found them at least twice throughout the day.

4. I’ve got to get better at “networking.” These events are sort of excruciating for me, because - I’m just no good and meeting and talking to people, in fact I picked a career in software specifically because of the low amounts of human to human interaction.

5. Take a pack of gum. You’re going to by away from home all day dummy, gum is an absolute must.

6. Klonopin.

7. Must get involved with the planning for next year, in terms of content for the serious Wordpress developer there was nothing. I would like to see something of a traditional track-based conference agenda representing different needs.

8. There is no need to evangelize something that people have paid money and gotten out of bed early on a Saturday morning for.

9. Code will fail when you are on stage. Don’t freak out.

10. There is, by and large, less snark in the Portland tech-scene than anywhere else in the world. This may be it’s biggest asset, or it’s greatest weakness.

11. Sometimes bloggers freak me out.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 10:45 am and is tagged as , , , , , , , .

  1. Stevie Benge:
    September 29th, 2008 @ 11:53 am

    “4. Get better at “networking.” These events are sort of excruciating for me, because - I’m just no good and meeting and talking to people, in fact I picked a career in software specifically because of the low amounts of human to human interaction.”

    …sounds like you’re a lot like me. As I stated in my WordCamp debrief, I oftentimes feel like the “weird old goth guy at the party”…

  2. Metroknow:
    September 29th, 2008 @ 1:48 pm

    #4: I am totally and completely in agreement. It is the most difficult thing for me as well - how do I suppress the clam-hands when I meet new people at these things?

    #9: Code will fail….Honestly this was one of the highlights - because you didn’t freak out. Made all of us there who see the error message pop up feel a hell of a lot better that we’re not the only ones……

    Thanks Dane - I tried to find you after to thank you in person but missed ya. Really appreciated it, and learned a LOT.

  3. Aaron:
    September 29th, 2008 @ 7:52 pm

    Thanks for participating and presenting, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. We tried to plan sessions to cater to a wide audience but had some areas that got missed… namely I think we missed the extremes. There wasn’t any super-hardcore-dev type sesions, nor were there any specificially catered at the absolute newbie. Next year we’ll definitely take that into consideration and probably break things down into multiple tracks.

    And I can totally echo #11 :)

  4. Betsy Richter:
    September 29th, 2008 @ 9:57 pm

    I’m betting I’m partially (if not entirely) responsible for #11!

  5. Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 29 » Silicon Florist:
    September 30th, 2008 @ 12:02 am

    [...] WORDCAMP PORTLAND Dane Hesseldahl writes “OK… so let’s talk about what I learned this weekend at Wordcamp Portland.” [...]

  6. Bram Pitoyo:
    September 30th, 2008 @ 3:56 am

    Agrees wholeheartedly with #10—and also the fact that we were collectively able to top the Twitter trending topic list (with the hashtag #wordcampdx) with minimal snark. That’s got to count for something, right?

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