I spent the last 2 days in San Diego at O’Reilly’s ETech conference.
Last year I spoke about the then recently launched Yahoo! Search Developer Network (not YDN), but this year I was just there to hang out. No talk. No booth duty. No agenda. I took no pictures.
And you know what? I liked it that way.
It was nice to wander around and meet up with people I don’t see that often. Even better was meeting up with folks who I’ve known in some capacity but never actually met in person–people like Dylan Tweney.
Some of my coworkers got a chance to show off their latest project: CheckMates, a mobile friend finder prototype that uses Yahoo! Maps. For more details, see: Chad Dickerson, Jonathon Trevor, Ed Ho, and The Unofficial Yahoo Weblog.
I enjoyed my time at the conference, despite it being cold in the hotel, the rooms too small, and the wifi sucking major wind. Sadly, I’ve come to expect those things at conferences over the years. The sessions I attended were generally quite good and informative. The sessions I did not attend were fairly well documented on the web within minutes (blogging is useful for something after all), so I don’t feel like I missed much.
That makes me wonder a bit. If I was even more anti-social that I am, would it be worth going? Or could I get all the good information from the comfort of my own couch?
Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.
Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.
