Acts of Volition

I was at the Desktop Developers’ Conference in Ottawa this week. The DDC was for developers working on Linux on the desktop and it started off a week in Ottawa that also includes the Linux Kernel Summit and the Ottawa Linux Symposium (neither of which I stuck around for - both being way over my head).

Here are some observations from the conference:

• T-Shirts and golf-shirts with project/company logos are the war-paint. Despite having a lot of these shirts myself, I resisted wearing any of them to the conference.
• Where the ladies at? (about 75 people and no women)
• Even though everyone has a cell phone and a laptop with IM on WiFi, there are almost no annoying phone/IM sound interruptions
• There is a constant, but not distracting, pitter-patter of laptop keyboards
• There was lots of debate and productive discussion - people were getting work done
• People seem to like Canada
• Lots of people knew of Prince Edward Island, and think of it as a idyllic vacation destination (true for a few months of the year)
• Traveling is much better when you have friends to drive your around, feed you, etc.

For those interested in the details and contents of the conference, here are some details other attendees have posted:

• Edd Dumbill gives an overview of the 2004 Desktop Developers’ Conference
• Chris Blizzard summarizes Havoc Pennington’s Keynote about the state of desktop development
• Chris Blizzard summarizes Dan Stone’s talk about the state X at freedesktop.org
• Chris Blizzard summarizes Thomas Fitzsimmons’s talk about the Java development for the desktop
• Friend and co-worker, Nathan Fredrickson, came along with me and will be at the Ottawa Linux Symposium for the rest of the week

I’m on my way to the airport to catch a flight back home in a few minutes.