Sunshine

Up to Sunday Feb 8th, 2015

Miles: n/a
Petrol runs: n/a
States: 1 (Florida)
Talks: 2 (SunshinePHP + uncon)

Hi all,

Nearly one week into my road trip and I hardly know where to start... still processing the shitload of information and impressions etc from the last few days, but will try to make some sense of it all.

Arrived in Miami last week Thursday with only an hour to spare before the speakers dinner. My flight was uneventful. The first leg from A'dam to Atlanta I sat next to a very friendly gentlemen, though a bit sizable, so he was spilling over in my seat which didn't make the flight that comfortable. In contrast, they'd given away my pre-booked seat for the flight from Atlanta to Miami which in practice meant I got an upgrade to business class. I'm not complaining ;-) Nice.

The speakers dinner was on a boat while we were cruising through the Bay of Miami with an awesome view of the bridge over the bay and the skyline. My friends from Pluralsight were sponsoring and got a chance to introduce themselves to the other speakers (and to me! - I'd spoken and mailed with Stephanie and Chat who were there, but had never actually met them before).

By the time we got back to the hotel I was totally done in for, been up for over 24 hours, out of which I'd been travelling for 18, so time for a good nights' sleep - the first and the last for a while -.
Missed the opening of the conference and more such, but got my answersheet copies done in time for my own talk in the afternoon.
I might have to review the abstract of the talk some more, as the group I had was relatively small. All the same, the presentation went well and the feedback I've been getting has been good on the whole. It was great seeing Michelangelo (Mike/DragonBe) taking the quiz for the fourth (!!) time and still enjoying getting caught off guard while doing it. Also, it was a true pleasure having Sara Goleman there to add to my explanations where needed ;-)

After my talk I still had to get the Diversity in IT survey I'd been working on with Wouter (for the keynote we're preparing) online. I tried to use the hackatron on Friday evening for that and did get some of it done, but also had a good time just chatting with people, so I ended up working on it late at night in my room and at long last managed to get it online at 5am. That obviously meant I'd have a short night. All the same, it was awesome to wake up to find my tweet about it had been retweeted numerous times already and we'd even received the first few replies already! So the short night turned out to be well worth it.

That afternoon I gave the WordPress talk I was going to give for JaxWeb/JaxPHP as an uncon session 'at popular request'. It's great to see that more PHP developers are starting to take WordPress a bit more seriously!

The rest of the conference for me was more than anything a great chance to reconnect with some people I hadn't seen for ages - Daniel Cousineau and Ben Ramsey for starters - and to at long last meet some I for some reason never ran into before such as fellow PHP Women Beth Tucker Long, Eryn O'Neill and Kayla Daniels and of course conference organizer extraordinair Adam Culp. Though starting to name people will in all honesty get me in trouble as either it's going to be a really long list or else I might offend people by not naming them, so I will stop right there and just say that I had a great time all together.
Saturday night we had a nice dinner (thanks Stephanie & Pluralsight!) with a slowly expanding group at the hotel after which the hot tub became the place to be. Being Dutch and rarely going to the beach, but enjoying spas, I didn't have a bathing suit. While that wouldn't have bothered me, I received quite some stern warnings against testing the waters au natural as the local law might not take the same liberal attitude... Alas, so no hot tub for me.