Beijing: Day 2, or Whatever Happened to Day 1?

Day 2 of CSDN-Dr. Dobb's Software Development 2.0 conference is a done deal. A wrap. Stick a fork in it--it's done. And hoping I don't get hurt patting myself on the back, it really was a great conference and a marvelous experience. Actually, I'm not worried about hurting myself, because I really didn't do much besides show up and look pretty. Granted, I did have one speaking session, but the accolades go to the folks at CSDN and the great crew of great speakers.

Here's what surprised me the most about the two-day event: Some of the most technically challenging presentations drew the biggest crowds and generated the most audience participation. For instance, Andrei Alexandrescu's session on "Lock-Free Programming" as it pertains to parallelization is a topic for the not-faint-of-heart. Moreover, it was the last session of the conference. And it was packed by more than 200 people who wouldn't stop asking questions. When Andrei said "final question" for the fifth time, well, I wanted to remind him that I was hungry and the official "last dinner" for the event was getting cold.

Andrei's experience matched that of James Reinders when a crowd filled the room to learn about "Thinking Parallel", a topic that several speakers touched on over the two days. Again, audience questions were top-flight and non-stop. The only real difference was that I had eaten lunch that day, but not the day of Andrei's presentation.

One session that I really enjoyed was that of Jonathan Palley, the VP of technology at Idapted which is using Ruby on Rails to build an international VoIP and interactive web platform. Not only did Jonathan provide a fascinating snapshot of the power of RoR, but did so in a mesmerizing fashion while sharing insights into what programmers ought to be doing more of (iteration) and less of (worrying about ugly code at the outset of development).

One real nuisance of all conferences that have parallel tracks is when two sessions that you want to attend are presented at the same time. That's why I missed Tenni Theurer's "Building High-Performance Web Sites" which by all accounts was a killer. Alas, that was probably the case with others too.

So at this point, there are only three Beijing-related concerns on my mind:

1. Can the traffic to the airport possibly match the traffic from the airport?
2. How can you sleep for 12 hours in coach class?
3. How is it possible to leave Beijing at 1:00 PM on Saturday and arrive in Seattle at 1:00 PM the same Saturday?

Oh well, I have a year to mull over these questions until next year back in Beijing.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:30 AM  Permalink