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| OSC11 ready to rock! |
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| Scott Crenshaw interview. |
It all started on Thursday afternoon when I arrived at the hotel in Amsterdam to check in. Our VP Cloud, Scott Crenshaw was stuck in traffic coming back from a customer visit and I was asked to fill in for him with a reporter from CloudWorks. I got the chance to focus more on OpenShift than on the general Red Hat strategy until Scott arrived, at which time I was able to relax and snap a few pictures of him doing his magic.
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| View from 17th floor. |
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| Keynote Scott Crenshaw |
At the venue, the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal (PTA), the local cruise ship terminal, we arrived with our technical team to ensure a few things were going to be working smoothly for the demos and sessions. The rooms I would be talking in were about 80 seats, so nice for break-out sessions! We hung a few banners, watched the crews setup the main stage and then headed for our hotel to get ready for the Speakers Dinner.
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| OpenShift t-shirt was a hit! |
That evening there was a speakers dinner that started with drinks, then food and finished up in a lounge bar on the top floor of the Mint Hotel, again, another nice view over the city of Amsterdam. The nice part was chatting with the various keynote speakers, where I got some time with the VP from Alfresco talking BPM and with Scott Crenshaw talking OpenShift a bit.
Open Source Conference
Friday was the big event, we got there early and watched around 800 attendees (more than doubling the number from last year) appearing slowly out of the morning fog to come enjoy a day filled with Open Source and networking. It was amazing to see the PTA filled up with customers, partners and contacts that I know from my years of working on Open Source. It was not possible to cross the main floor without getting stopped by someone at least 3 times, amazing interactions!
The OpenShift talk was packed full with all seats eventually taken and standing room filled on the sides. Even though the talks were only 30 minutes, it was possible to get some nice interactions with the crowd. I got some interesting Python and PHP questions, passed out a few goodies and after the talk even had to give away the last t-shirt I was wearing to a fan! The jBPM talk was filled also and again had to put a lot of information into the short time frame, but there were some really nice reactions to the talk in discussions after the session and on Twitter.
Both sessions slides will be made available via the OSC website, but I will include them here for all to enjoy. It was a long day, a busy day, but filled with great people at a great location. I am seriously looking forward to next years event and wonder if we can double the attendance again!