I went to OSCON here in Portland yesterday, the annual gathering of the geekiest of the computer geeks: the Open Source community. Oddly enough, in a big, festive conglomeration of computer people, I couldn’t find an Internet connection to save my life, hence no posts made directly from the scene. Instead, I had to occupy my time filling up on cookies and coffee, stocking up on as much swag as I could carry, and sneaking into the lunch area to steal food*.
Couple of highlights (not that even the highlights would be at all interesting to 99.7% of you)…
Best Swag
The Google Little Red Moleskine
God, I love Google.
When you first signed in, they had a pile of these tote bags filled with marketing crap from various vendors for you to snag and store the crap you’d eventually gather over the course of the day (Yes, I know that sentence is awkward. I just don’t feel like fixing it.). One of the things waiting inside was this:
Google Hearts Mao
Brilliant. A red moleskin reminscent of Mao’s Little Red Book, the perfect giveaway at a convention for, as my friend, Aaron, puts it, “communist hippies.” The whole idea of Open Source wreaks of socialism, so why pussy foot around it?
I went back later and snatched another of the bags, but I didn’t realize until I got home that someone had already pilfered the moleskine out of that one. Unfortunately, that meant I spent several hours carrying around extra weight, something I really didn’t need considering I was already lugging around a laptop and another bag in a poorly air-conditioned room (in other words, I was sweating like a fat man on a treadmill). Bastards.
Most Pathetic Booth
Drupal
How sad. I actually like Drupal. It’s a great tool, one that a few friends and I use to maintain our oft-neglected techie blog, Nerdliness.com. I was looking forward to chatting up the people running that show. Looks like the feeling wasn’t mutual.
Drupal: Latin for “pathetic?”
Bad enough that you end up with shitty booth placement (off in the furthest corner away from the entrances), but nobody decided to bother manning the thing for awhile. I’m no marketing genius**, but I’d say this isn’t the best way to excite people about your product.
Most Surprising Sponsor
Makes me chuckle every time I think of seeing this name at an Open Source convention:
And cue the Imperial March…
Open Source types typically feel a deep seeded, irrational loathing for Microsoft, so I get a kick out of the idea that they helped make OSCON possible. Say what you want about the “Evil Empire,” but the fact of the matter is that the company changed the world (and yes, I mean for the better).
I do wonder, though, if their involvement at OSCON wasn’t somebody’s idea of a joke. If I had billions of dollars, I’d absolutely find ways to irritate my haters by funding things they believed in just to make them feel dirty for being obligated to thank me.
And I felt more than a little sorry for the poor guys running that booth wearing the polos with “Microsoft” embroidered on the sleeve. They had to defend themselves to every person walking into their booth by starting every conversation with “I really don’t work for Microsoft…”
A Bee
If I was a flower growing wild and free…
Because I just like bees.
*Ok, technically I’m not sure if I was really sneaking in. I think only paying attendees were supposed to be in there. Regardless, hiding behind fat geeks while humming the Mission: Impossible theme to myself made the bland chickenish meal much more interesting.
**Regular genius, yes. Marketing genius… well, probably. Hell, who couldn’t be a marketing genius? At least compared to whatever fucktard came up with those stupid fucking Progressive Insurance Checkout ads.
