Tania.co.za

StarCamp

StarCamp was very nice. (Sorry, I'm all out of intellectual-sounding adjectives.) The venue was perfect, the company was perfect, and some of the talks, like those by Phil Barrett, Ian and others were actually quite good too. To be honest, I didn't care all that much if one or two of them dragged on a bit on topics which were of no interest to me whatsoever, because the nice thing about an unconference is that you can fiddle around on your laptop, fall asleep (like Paul!), get some tea or go smack someone in a Wii boxing game next door without feeling like you've committed some violation of protocol. Of course, there are some basic rules of etiquette that do apply, but they are not vastly different from those you should adhere to when some friends come over for pizza.

I went out with Dennis, Simon, Adrianna, David (well, one of the Davids) and Neil (the other Neil) after the first day, and with a much bigger crowd at the end of the second day. Jonathan (the main Jonathan) found the discovery of my longstanding desire to own a Captain Janeway uniform perfectly entertaining, and made all sorts of psychological deductions from it. We all argued about when Descartes had lived and were all proven wrong.

Simon, Neil, Jeremy. (Graham's fingers in the background.)

I don't think one should have StarCamp too often, though. About once every second or third weekend would be often enough.