The keynotes were mostly good. Thinking about cloud computing as a centralization movement that’s counter to recent computing trends was thought-provoking. “We should always have full control.” Chris Peterson had extremely perceptive observations on trends in security and privacy. The database normalization talk was very good, but I wish it had been a little deeper. A great talk on database security by Josh Berkus; I wonder if I could hire him to audit our postgres installation. Subversion practices talk was decent but a little fluffy. DTrace, for “full stack” introspection, looks like a great tool. I can see us using it at work, once the Linux port is available.
I didn’t a chance to spend a lot of time in the exhibitor hall. I’ll peruse it a second time when it’s less crowded, to ensure I didn’t miss something good. I took this opportunity to rejoin the FSF. I used to be a member, then I let my membership lapse, then I forgot to rejoin…so I corrected that oversight today.
I got a couple more talks (Ubuntu deployments, then software failures), then dinner, then an exhibitor reception, and then multiple Birds of a Feather sessions. (Arg, how will I attend them all?) Then I’ll crash.
Being around lots of other smart geeks is invigorating.
Seek Nuance 
I ate too many egg rolls at the exhibitor reception. That was a mistake.