Today is the first day of PGCon Tutorials. I was out of the house by about 7am and settled in at Cora’s for breakfast 10 minutes later. They have free wireless there.
First order of the day, apart from OJ and Yoghurt Harvest Crunch, was email. I uploaded some slides from a BSDCan speaker and pushed them to the website. I answered a query from a former attendee who could not attend in 2008 letting them know how the BSDCan 2008 conference went.
I arrived at the tutorial location at about 8:10 AM. I set up my laptop and brought in the sponsorship signs and set them up. Coffee and tea arrived at about 0830 and I directed them to the right location.
David Maxwell was amongst the first to arrive. David is primarily helping out with the wireless and with other tasks as they arrive.
Attendees started arriving from about 0815. They were keen to get into the tutorial. The room is just about full with roughly 50 people in there. We had a problem with wireless, but David contacted the University and it’s being sorted out as I type this (at 0933).
One attendee arrived and paid late. I did not charge him the usual $50 penalty for late payment. We do not like handling payment during the conference. We have so many other things to do. Thus, we charge you extra for the convenience. Usually. I recommend against testing this.
An attendee, on the way to the head, just informed me that wireless is now working fine.
I chatted with a speaker/attendee over IRC and directed him to breakfast, coffee, and tutorial location.
Later today I will be headed off to various locations around the city to pickup packages from sponsors. Most of these will be for the registration tote bags. Those will be packed up tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, I will be printing the last of the badges and invoices. This should go well. I’ll retrieve the printer and desktop computer from the SITE building, where the U of O staff have generously allowed us to store our gear. I’ll set up first thing in the morning and stay there until mid-afternoon, when we will pack up and move a block down the road to the Royal Oak on Laurier for the Registration Pickup.
Tiph has arrived and she’s going to handle things while I’m out of the room.
