2008-09-28 flying back
by Vasil KolevSo I have about hour and a half more to wait for the plane, let me write my impressions of the States.
I wouldn’t be able to live here. It’s even hard to imagine, the things are not just different, but hard to live with at some points… It was life-saving that at the conference there were some people like me, which with you can drink and talk (including some who could drank more than me, I wasn’t the official alcoholic of the event :) ).
(yes, I know that it’s not really good in Bulgaria and will write about that later, but something in me is extremely happy that I’m going back)
The conference itself was somewhat disappointing. I expected a lot more serious and interesting stuff, and in the end a lot of the things were sales presentations with a bit of technical content. Who knows, maybe WTH and the rest have spoilt me …
Also, they recorded only the keynotes, there was no information on the site how to get there, etc., which should be done for all the conferences where people travel from afar.
So, to summarize – the conference seemed to me marketing-related and for newbies.
On the next event I was (asterisk developer con) it was better, including that I managed to show to the people working on chan_sip and it should get fixed in at least 1.6. There were two groups of people – one writing code and fixing stuff, the other drawing up plans for some incredible stuff. In the end for each of the two ideas – the new API and the media negotiation reworking they will need at least a few years, especially with the way asterisk is written now.
What save this was that I managed to talk with some really great people like Chris Tooley, Olle Johansen, Kris Kielhofner (the guy that definitely drinks more than me), Damin, the people from the code zone, etc., and that I managed to go drinking with them.
(and btw the paranoia helps, I manage to go every time through the metal detectors without them ringing :) )