So LCA2010 is underway. It’s been busy and it’s only day two (day one really), so I’ll give a brief recap so that I can remember it later. Registration was quick and painless and the swag is decent:
- a nice-ish bag;
- a few note books;
- a USB flash drive with the programme and such;
- the requisite t-shirt (and a hat)
- some sunscreen (optimistic) and Lynx stuff (a very good idea!)
and some other stuff that I forget.
The newcomers session afterward with Rusty Russell and a woman whose name I didn’t catch me was informative and entertaining. They covered the programme and talked about past LCAs, but the most useful is likely to be the “Advice, Secrets and Lies” that many people wish they’d known before their first LCA.
Do
Attend the full conference, especially the keynotes!
Turn up to talks and actually pay attention! Don’t turn up and spend the session reading email.
If you see something wrong, help out!
Don’t leave rubbish in the theatres or anywhere else!
Get some rest! The week is something of a marathon. You’ll need it.
Blog, photograph, tweet, etc. Use the #lca2010 tag so that people can find your stuff.
Do not!
See nothing while hanging out on IRC.
Drink more than you usually do. (There’s a tradition that at least one attendee or speaker is hospitalised each year: don’t be that person.)
Fanboy!!!! the speakers.
Harass others.
Join or start more than one new project. It seems like a good idea, but it’s not. Pick one thing to get enthusiastic, you’ll never have time for more than one anyway.
Believe that your ssh keys have changed.
Secrets
The attendees are the conference. They are interesting (and some of them are speakers!) so speak to them.
The badge has annotations on it. There’s a colour scheme (orange for hobbyists; blue for professionals; red for speakers or something), the fish heads represent tickets to the Penguin Dinner, the radio thingo to the Professional Networking Session, the map your origin, and a few other things.
Surprises (often at keynotes, yet another reason to attend them)
The in jokes (laugh along, write them down and ask about them later)?
Next year’s conference (usually announced at the Penguin Dinner).
All the stories about things that “always happen” at pretty much lies. It’s different every time and, while there’s a few things that happen often, they’re
Now, we’re off to the Green Man pub.