Job van Achterberg

This year's YAPC::EU in Pisa was nothing short of amazing. While I am not sure if it will outdo my experiences in 2008 and 2009, it was everything I've come to expect of YAPCs.

While the flight was delayed, the hotel room had air conditioning (that's a + compared to Lisbon... ) and we went for some nice food in a restaurant near the river.

On the first day we walked a couple of meters to get to the YAPC buses (seriously, what a great arrangement) and met osfameron and some other attendees. We were at the hotel in 10 minutes and I just remember meeting a lot of people and attending talks, of which the keynote talk was the most surreal.
By the time we went to the evening dinner I felt like I'd been there for a week already.

Thursday was more of that same goodness, meeting interesting people, meatspace and non-meatspace friends, and feeling that sense of belonging to an enthusiastic community. The evening before I had decided to do a lightning talk on Postscript::TextDecode and to my surprise (and horror!) it got accepted. But it went very well on Thursday evening, nerves aside.

Friday went by fast, and after it was all over everyone seemed to have the same good idea of going into town to socialize with beer. At about 3am I got back to the hotel.

Good times, I'm looking forward to Latvia in 2011.

Oh, and first post.