.. and I didn’t get to go. I am sad. Amsterdam sounds like a lot of fun too, although what I really miss is all the people. Reading planetapache, most of the AC related posts echo the same sentiment: everyone meant to do some hacking, or catch up on work, or finish polishing their presentation – but all they ended up doing was meeting great new people and talking with all their old friends who only get to see each other at ApacheCons.
That’s a separate and very interesting question: how much affect does the personal dynamic of individual committers in an open source community have on the overall health and direction of the community? I.e., many people really look forward to ApacheCon just for the personal contacts. The great set of talks and technical interactions and chance to do Hackathons and get real itches scratched are just a great benefit of being there. Are there quantitative measurements of how the strength of actual friendships change an OS community? I’m sure there are quantitative measurements about how the number of in-person chances to meet can affect an OS community – the more the better, obviously, but how much more, and what specific aspects does it tend to improve?
But I digress. I just meant to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t go, and ${wave} to everyone who was there and is probably flying home now. But I’ll definitely be in Atlanta!
Want to see what you missed? flickr seems the most popular service ASF’ers tend to use, and we even have a flickr photo group now, along with the obvious apachecon* tags.
