After unloading all the gear from the car (5 boxes), I had part of a beer on the patio to cool down. Eventually I got too cold and moved inside, where I started typing up this entry while seated on my dad’s lazy-boy chair. I napped for about 20 minutes and then it was dinner time. Salmon and potatoes.

At 8pm, the Stanley Cup final series starts between Detroit and Pittsburgh. We’ll be watching that.

I estimated the t-shirts and tote bags much better this year. There is just one PGCon t-shirt left over, and that’s mine.

What we didn’t do well is estimate sizes. We will order more S, M, and L next year. And less XL, 2XL, and 3XL. I guess the crowd is shrinking.

Lunch estimation for PGCon was better than for BSDCan. I think more BSDCan people head to local restaurants etc. I think we had about 15 extra lunches at PGCon and roughly 30 extra at BSDCan.

For next year I’ll remember to do this:

• Now that we have more sponsors, we need to provide more information to them as to what we can and can. For example, sign size, printing locations, and sign printers. Let them know that we cannot ship things back out to them. We have no facilities for that.
• Include taxi phone numbers on the website
• Add Novetel to the list of hotels
• Increase the number of hotel rooms set aside for attendees
• perhaps buy a laptop (and lock) for the registration desk. That is easier than lugging around a desktop and screen. Setup/tear down is much easier as well
• order fewer badge holders. We have 400 at present.

• Things to do:

  • pack car for trip back to PA
  • donations to Mission (done)
  • upload my PGCon slides
  • drop printer at Eric’s

  On the way back to PA:

  • import the Subaru into the US so it can be licensed with PA
  • ?

We walked over to the canal and up to Confederation Square. Along the way I gave short talks on the Rideau Canal, Chateau Laurier Hotel, Lord Elgin Hotel, Parliament Buildings.

At Confederation Square we circled the National War Memorial and crossed over Wellington to over look the Rideau Canal. Here we split into three groups. One headed to each of Parliament, War Museum, and Museum of Civilization. I joined the latter group. We walked between the Chateau and the canal, through Major’s Hill Park and across the Interprovincal Bridge, turning left and heading to the Museum.

We were back in the residence lobby by just after noon. Stephen drove Emilee, David, and Robert to the airport. While there, I dealt with some speakers who were staying overnight Saturday. The reservations weren’t quite right. Complicating the matter were a few people who did not check out before becoming tourists. They are flying out late today, but didn’t check out.

It is now 3:07 pm and I’m sitting in Starbucks.

I’ll be heading home to pickup that Lenovo power adaptor. It belongs to David Maxwell. I’m meeting him at U of O at 4pm while I’m packing up the car with all the conference gear.

Sunday will be my first day of recreation in over three weeks. I’ll be riding my bike downtown to watch some of the marathon. This should be great.

Things left to do:

• Decide where to store the registration computer, etc for the next year. Willie has again offered his place.
• pack the car
• return my access card and key for the storage room
• Take the BSDCan auction process to the Mission.

Now it’s 3:18 pm and time for me to head home before attacking the gear in storage at U of O.

We didn’t run off an auction. We didn’t have much stuff.

We were out of the building within 20 minutes of the talks ending and I was at the Royal Oak pub by 6pm. I stayed until 9:30 or so when David and Emilee and I headed to Dairy Queen for a snack. Home by 10:30 and sleeping by 11pm.

I sat with Danielle, Willie, Jan, and Julie. Ours was the first able to eat.

I stayed until roughly 11pm, drinking scotch. Home and in bed by midnight. Awake about 7am, just in time for the construction noise to start.

I took a slight different way to U of O this time. Bad choice. It gook me 40 minutes to get there, instead of the usual 15. I arrived about 0925. Got things set up and running. This incluces:

• extracting stored material from the room
• installing power bars in the lecture halls
• placing sponsor signage into the lecture halls and registration area
• installing power plug-in signs above the power bars

Then headed off to the bank with David Maxwell as chaffeur. I was picking up cash to reimburse speakers who had paid for their own travel.

Back about 1045.

Final arrangements for David Maxwell to have a room for a Coverity Scan session at 11:30

Adjusted my closing session slides to include new information.

It’s now 1347.

I was out of the house by 5:50 am and into Cora’s by 6:10. On the way I deposited a cheque. Or rather, I tried to. I was at my personal bank, not my commerical bank. DOH. OK, it was early.

Breakfast. Check email, off to the SITE building. On the way, stop in at Starbucks and notice that one of the staff members appears to be arriving quite late. I’ll ask her about that if I see her again.

Arriving at SITE at about 7am, I start setting up the registration computer system. I print out the missing badges and start inserting them into badge holders. Along the way, the tables arrive and are set up by the delivery guys.

Dru arrives about 8am and I’m just finishing off the badge stuffing. I extract the rest of the stuff from the car (t-shirts, tote bags, etc) and move the car to the garage.

I was to get an easel or something similar for a job board. We used a concrete pillar instead.

The sponsor emailed me to let me know the sign could not be delivered. They tried, but failed to find us. Fair enough. I contacted Fedex about 11:45 and got things straightened out. The missing sign showed up at 1245. It is now in place. A volunteer has been assigned to retrieve all three signs at the end of the day so they are safely stowed away. Simlarly, someone will fetch all the power bars. I think we are short about 6. If I get time, I’ll buy some from Home Depot in the morning.

Yesterday I had ordered a special lunch for one attendee. It arrived.

During the day, I contacted my conference manager several times. Amongst the things requested were:

• forks
• additional coffee today and tomorrow
• water tomorrow

One attendee needs a vegan meal. I gave him $20 and he got something from the cafeteria upstairs. He returned with the receipt and the change. No worries.

Several people asked to print. Sure, go ahead, use the registration computer. This resulted in several more job sheets being added to the job bulletin board… err concrete pillar.

I was unable to reimburse the three speakers to whom I promised money. I will do this tomorrow when I have the correct bank card with me. I’ll go during the first session and pick up some EUR and CAD.

Tiph and I helped out at lunch and distributed the Ham, Chicken, and Vegie box lunches. A few were left over after lunch and we put them by the coffee/tea. They are slowly disappearing.

I learned more about the University of Oaklahoma and their accounting practices today. Intersting what some attendees much go through in order to attend PGCon.

I asked U of O for a small room tomorrow so David Maxwell can run a session on how Coverity can help the PostgreSQL project.

I printed invoices for a few attendees.

I corresponded with a BSDCan attendee who lost his tote bag.

I found a laptop power adaptor in my box of WAPs while I was packing them up. We did not need them this year because the U of O has some wireless infrastructure now. Next year, this should be a breeze.

It is now 4:46 PM. I’ll be helping to pack up after the last talk finishes at 6:30. Then I’ll head to the EnterpriseDB dinner.

After my last post, I went down to the Yahoo! sponsored event. The place was packed. All the free drink tickets were gone. I was too late for that.

I did get a ticket for the Wii raffle. I didn’t win.

I had a beer. Talked with several people. Bought Tom Lane a drink and thanked him for all his help he’s given me over the years.

The car contains all the left over registration gear. I’ll take it directly to the SITE building for 8am. All the volunteers will be there at that time. The first priority will be printing badges. Hmmm, actually, I think I’ll turn up earlier and get the badges started first.

For now, it’s the Kitchener/Belleville game in the Memorial Cup. It’s overtime, 12:33 to go, and it’s tied 3-3.

First major problem. Signage. A sign was left in the tutorial room over night and it was not there in the morning. I contacted the sponsor, found out the printer, and called them. They said it could be here Thursday morning by noon. From New Hamsphire to Ottawa. Cost: Roughly $150. We’ll cover that cost. It was my fault. The sign really didn’t need to be in the tutorial room, according to the sponsorship specifications. But I figured I would any way. Good intention. Unfortunate result.

After the session started at about 9:05 I left the volunteers to run the show and I headed over to the SITE buildling to pick up the registration computer and the printer. While there, I sorted things into registration piles and conference day piles. That would make the afternoon pickup easier.

The morning was mostly badge and invoice preparation for the registrations that had come in since the last batch was run.

After lunch, I packed up the computer in to return it to SITE where I’d pick up the registration material for packing. Mistake. I forgot to print the master attendeee list before packing everything up. Gah! Reassumble computer, print, pack up again.

Down to SITE. Pick up tote bags, inserts, etc. Back to the Tutorials for assembly.

Hmm, we’re missing some Google books. Where are they? Back to SITE. Not here. Oh yeah, at home. Drive home. Retrieve. Back to Tutorials.

Bag prep is well under way. The team does this well.

Halfway through bag stuffing we notice that one sponsor has given us two different inserts in one box. We didn’t notice. So we now have 150 bags or so with one of two inserts for this sponsor. We set those bags aside for later dealing.

By 3pm, our assigned time for arrival at the pub, we have 45 minutes more work. I call the pub. No worries, the FIFA crowd has assembled to take over the pub to cheer Manchester.

We complete our bags and five people carry one box each to the pub. I drive the car there so I have the extra gear in case it’s needed. We are roughly an hour late.

We manage to find space amongst the soccer fans and open our registration pickup.

I had out goodies to various people in the pub, including staff and customers. Just because I can. The staff at the Royal Oak are great. We always give them pens and left-over swag. They tell us pens are in hot demand. A server never has enough pens.

By 4:40pm it’s busy as. All the tutorial crowd has arrived and we discover we are missing many badges. Investigating the print-merge files, I notice a couple of extra NEXT RECORD statements. Bugger. Dru goes through the master list reconciling it with the bags and badges. I use that to extra the data needed and create a new merge file and print to PDF. This PDF will be printed in the morning.

Roughly 50 people didn’t get their badges, but they did get their tote bags.

At 7:40pm, the pub is now quiet. Most people have headed to the Yahoo! venue. That’s where I’ll go as soon as we pack up the car.

I spent 4:30-8:45 PM at the Royal Oak conversing with the various attendees.

I paid the bills of two people who forgot to pay their bills. With this, the waitress gets a very large tip. I will collect from the people in question tomorrow morning. This happens from time to time and it is always negligence, not malice.

Wednesday morning will involve packing up the printer and workstation and taking them to the tutorial lobby so I can print off some badges and invoices. Also needed are the tote bags, pens, invoices, badges, lanyards, and inserts from various sponsors. The bag stuffing occurs from 2pm. Then we move to the pub at 3pm.

There is one delivery missing from a sponsor. I do not know where it is.

In addition, there was to be a delivery from one sponsor to the caterer. I do not know if that arrived on time. I just emailed the caterer to find out.

If these packages are not here in time, they simply cannot be included in the conference.

A sponsor asked for help shipping things back from PGCon. I cannot do that. It can take an incredible amount of time to ship things back. It’s not the time spent taking it to Fedex. It is first storing the gear until you can take it to Fedex. If you do this for multiple sponsors, it is several trips between storage and delivery. It could easily take a whole morning. I wish I could help them, but it’s just not something we can handle. at this point in our evolution.

It is now 9:52 PM and I”m falling asleep.

One of the two guys appeared much older than most students.

Instead, said lunches went to the Ottawa Mission, a much more deserving destintion than these two thieves.

After lunch, I headed out and did pickups:

• four packages from Barrhaven for one sponsor, and one for another
• three packages of t-shirts from the supplier
• two boxes of tote-bag inserts

All this gear is safely stowed in the SITE buildling. Some of it will be retrieved tomorrow morning, loaded into the car, and brought to the tutorials for assembly. Later, it will arrive at the pub for Registration Pickup, the first big social of PGCon 2008.

I got back to the tutorials at about 3:45 PM in time to see the end of Peter Eisentraut’s talk on Porting Oracle Applications to PostgreSQL.

Right now, people are heading to the pub as Peter’s talk is over. I’ll post this and head over there myself.