Sawyer X

After we reached the hotel yesterday at 10PM, we met up with Shmuel Fomberg from Israel.pm who was in the lobby. He provided us with a lot of information (we missed the get-together that day), maps and explanations with the locations of various places (hotel, leaning tower, where the Friends and Family meeting the next day is, etc.) and even offered some food. One awesome guy!

We tried to find a place open nearby but in the dark, near a stretch of main road, it all looks like places to get mugged/gang-raped. We decided to stay in where I could practice my lecture one more time before tomorrow. Considering how nervous I was, it was a good idea! After practicing the lecture one last time, I noticed that my battery is almost done so I reached for my power supply and found the socket here is incompatible. Panic ensued.

The next morning we woke up early (7AM..ish), took a shower and went downstairs to find someone that might be able to help. We met Wendy and Liz and they offered me a power cable which (I only now know) I misused and therefor thought it doesn't work. Still scared that I have no power and I'm giving the first talk, we went to eat.

After breakfast we checked the main hall again and it was weird that at 8AM no one was there yet even though we're suppose to already meet up at 9AM. Then we found out that our watches weren't synchronized and it's actually 7AM - meaning we woke up at 6AM...

We decided to take this opportunity to walk around Pisa and try and find an adapter. We've walked for almost an hour 'till we found more YAPC attendees and a computer store that didn't have any adapter, but said there might be one at an electricity store ("somewhere over there, maybe"). We decided to get back in time for the (real) meet up.

Before I could utter the words "I should find Gabor" - we already found him (I'm not kidding, it was in the middle of the sentence.) He had a cable we could use and I charged my laptop and checked the revised schedule - I'm actually second, not first.

Before the talk I saw Dotan Dimet from Israel.pm which comforted me (because I was really excited) and told me everything will be okay. Thanks Dotan! The talk itself went well. People enjoyed it or at least faked it better than I could recognize. I recorded a screencast (video + audio) of the entire lecture and I'll try to get that worked out into Youtube! or perhaps a Perl presentation website and keep you posted.

After my talk we mingled a bit and I met Dave Rolsky (who seriously kicks ass) that helped us find the vegan dishes at lunch and dinner. Amongst other people I've met (or exchanged a few words with) were Steffen Mueller (++tsee), Dave Cross, Nicholas Clark, Aritotle. I also met squeek and franck from the Dancer crew and we plan to try and find time or a small hackaton.

The talks were really good and the lightening talks cracked me up. Cheers to all talk givers!

Later we went to dinner with everyone and had a lovely night.

I only just now got the time to finish this report and it's already the middle (or close to the end) of the second day and many more experiences. Hopefully I'll find the time to write them down and post them as well.