OSCon and Portland Wrap-Up

I really enjoyed OSCon. This was the first conference I've been to in years where I've felt a bit sad that it's over. I met a lot of interesting people, enjoyed most of the talks I attended (and especially this morning's keynotes), and also enjoyed Portland. I recommend OSCon. Last year, I went to Usenix ATC. Compared to Usenix, OSCon had more talks that were relevant to things I'm interested in, more people that I met with similar interests, more people that I knew online and met in person, and a more broad program. The one criticism I would level at OSCon is that it has a disproportionately high number of web-related talks.

On to other items...

Portland

Probably the friendliest "big city" I've ever seen. Everyone from cab drivers to bus drivers seems to go out of their way to be helpful and friendly. Somewhat different from, say, Chicago or Los Angeles.

The climate is very nice and the transit system is excellent as well. While it doesn't move as fast as below-ground systems, since it has to work within traffic, one nice thing for visitors is that you actually get to see the city and see potential places to stop. Last year, we went from Boston to Cambridge on the T, but you don't see much except a whole lot of concrete along the way.

The Japanese Gardens are wonderful and deserve a visit.

Compared to Indianapolis, where we lived for awhile, Portland has some nicer parks, and a better transit system. I think that Indianapolis had a nicer walking path. Portland had a lot of friendly people, including many that worked for TriMet. MAX was very nice, with frequent departures. The TriMet system had scattered electronic signs about the MAX lines, streetcar stops, and even some bus stops I think. These listed how many minutes until the next departure in each direction, and were very helpful. Stations were announced audibly and on signs on-board. There was helpful information at stops and platforms.

Indianapolis has a really quite awful transit system, which consists of, let's see, regular buses and small buses. These run infrequently, are known for not being on-time, and a former co-worker had trouble with them just not showing up at times. They also all seemed to run between downtown and the outskirts. So if you wanted to go from one area towards the outskirts to another area there, you'd have to go towards downtown and back out.

Because of all this, I never rode IndyGo, and wouldn't ever encourage visitors to. TriMet was very different, and if I lived in Portland, I'd want to live close to MAX.

Hotel

The DoubleTree Lloyd Center is a nice, friendly hotel. Everyone here has noticed that the elevators inexplicably stop on the 2nd floor every time they go down, but other than that, we have had no real problems (other than some water dripping onto the desk when we first were here, but maintenance fixed that). It's annoying that they charge for in-room Internet access, but that is unfortunately typical for hotels of this class.

The room is also a bit small, but has worked out OK. The hotel is very close to a MAX stop, and fairly close to the Lloyd Center mall, which is convenient. The staff is very friendly and helpful as well, especially the concierge staff, which are great and helping visitors find their way around the city and the transit system.

They give you cookies on check-in, but Terah was disappointed that they didn't offer any without nuts.

Restaurants

I had opportunities to eat with various people from OSCon, some Portland area people, and of course, Terah and Jacob.

Portland has some good restaurants, and a few more iffy ones...

The Multnomah Grill in our hotel was one of the iffy ones. I had the ribs, which were not at all good. The prices were about in line with other Portland restaurants, which is too bad because the food wasn't. Because of all that, I just couldn't bring myself to try the other restaurant in the hotel, Eduardo's Mexican/American Cantina.

I had heard about Jake's Famous Crawfish from a passenger on the train. It was also listed on the OSCon wiki restaurants page. It's a historic century-old restaurant, with excellent seafood. I had parmesean-crusted Alaskan Halibut, which was very good.

I also went to the Newport Seafood Grill, which is within walking distance of the hotel, just on the other side of the Lloyd Center mall. It was also good; I had a tuna dish served rare, with a sauce that complimented it well.

Blossoming Lotus Cafe is a vegan cafe in the Pearl District. I hadn't ever been to one of those before. It was OK, but not all that great.

Across the street was Sweet Masterpiece, a chocolate and coffee house. Excellent chocolate made in-house, all sorts of desserts, and good coffee.

Rock Bottom in downtown has some surprisingly good food options. I was there with a group of local and OSCon Haskellers, and it was a little bit hard to follow conversation all the time due to the background noise, but that's to be expected in this sort of place. I'm not into beer, but those that were enjoyed their selection, I think.

I also went to a couple of chains: Quizno's and Ben and Jerry's. Both were about what you'd expect from those chains. Good ice cream of course at Ben & Jerry's.

OSCon provided breakfast and lunch free to paid attendees. Breakfast consisted of a selection of various fruits, slightly stale pastries, and bagels. On the tutorial days, lunch was pre-made boxed lunch. For what it was, it was OK. On Wednesday and Thursday, lunch was served hot in buffet lines. They had chicken both days, which looked identical. I had tried it Wednesday so knew not to bother Thursday. Wednesday they also had salmon with cranberries, which was good. Their salads, breads, etc. were OK.

Oregon Convention Center

This is where OSCon was held. A very nice, but incredibly huge, building. They say it covers the equivalent of 13 square city blocks, and if you look on a map, you can see that it is indeed quite large. There was a lot of walking to get to everything, even though OSCon took up only one part of this huge place. Restrooms in particular were not in very convenient locations to just about anything. But it was a nice place and I wouldn't mind being there again next year.