Christine promises that she’s going to write about this year’s SUSECon conference, but she started with this…
Finally! A bash at a tech conference that was worth the trouble.
I really, really, really dislike parties and other social events that are held as part of tech conferences, and tend to treat them about the same way as I did the pandemic. Part of my dislike is that they tend to be too noisy and too crowded, but the main reason is that they’re generally just not too much fun. A bunch of middle class tech geeks standing around with their buddies with drinks in hand just isn’t my cup of tea.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. Tech geeks are my people… except for the mainstream middle-class part.
You see, I’ve never identified culturally as being part of mainline US culture. I do my best to fit in, but fiftysomething years after the fact, I still see myself as belonging to the counterculture of the 1960s, with an allegiance to what Abbie Hoffman once called “Woodstock Nation.” You know, brothers and sisters and all that.
In other words, if you run a conference you could probably try has hard as you like to throw a social event that would turn me on, but would probably fail. That’s just the way I roll, as they say.
Wednesday Night’s SUSE Band Party
A case in point would be the Wednesday night “after dark” social at last week’s SUSECon, the annual conference thrown by the Germany-based SUSE Linux and open-source folks, which was the first of two social events that I know about at the event. It was all right, there was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn’t for me.
The band — the SUSE Band, a rock group whose members are evidently mostly SUSE employees if I understand correctly — was more than adequate, but mainly those in attendance were just standing around in groups, I’m guessing mostly with the folks that they traveled to the conference with, again with drinks in hand.
The latter is probably explains a lot. I maybe would’ve enjoyed that party if I still drank alcohol. The way I remember things, I enjoyed myself — perhaps too much — at any event that had booze and music back in the day.
Anyway, I took a couple of walks though the party just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, firgured I wasn’t, and left after about five minutes.
Thursday Night’s City Walk Bash
Thursday night’s social was a whole ‘nother thing, however. It was a gas!
Before I go on, I should probably backtrack a bit and explain that SUSECon, which is a movable feast that happens in a different location every year — last year was Berlin and next year will be in Prague — this year took place at Loews Sapphire Falls Resort at Universal Orlando, which is NBCUniversal’s answer to Disney World.
The Thursday night bash, which basically closed the conference for most attendees, was held at CityWalk, a Universal attraction that sits adjacent to the theme park alongside an artificial river. SUSECon had chartered a bus to carry people to the event, but since the venue is also available by way of a free water taxi that makes a round trip to CityWalk from the Sapphire Falls hotel every twenty minutes, I chose that method since riding a boat is something I’ve seldom done.
It took about 15 minutes to take the trip to CityWalk — which looks something like a permanent installation of eateries at a large fairground. The Pavillian area where the bash was to take place was blocked off due to a “private event,” which was the SUSECon bash (you had to be wearing your lanyard and badge to gain admission). I arrived about a half hour early and had to wait to get in, but I put that time to good use making friends with Amit, a fellow journalist from Bangalore, India who was in town to cover the event. As it turned out, we shared interests that went beyond writing about tech.
The event itself was an indoor/outdoor event, with the outdoor part taking place in an area that looked something like a city block in New Orleans’ French Quarter that was flooded with good tunes provided by a DJ. The indoor part was a karoke bar, presumably with dancing but I didn’t go in. The next day at the hotel, several people told me they’d sung karaoke the night before and had a good time.
Free, and all you could eat, street food ruled the day, and it was delish. I especially liked the Jamaican pastries that were available in two varieties, meat and veggie, as well as the hand sliced BBQ beef brisket that had been slow cooked and melted in my mouth.
I had a blast. I enjoyed myself so much I stuck around for an hour-and-a-half or so, before getting back in the water taxi for the trip back to the hotel.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
It is nice to see that a Linux distribution like SuSE is doing well enough to afford this type of conference bash.
It reminds me of some of the DECUS events. DECUS (in its heyday) would have 19000+ people attend two events a year in the USA. At least two years they would rent out Disneyland in Anaheim during a weeknight and all of the attendees (and exhibitors) could go for free. Having less than 20,000 people in a park built to handle 100,000 a day meant that there were NO lines and people coming off Space Mountain (as an example) could run from the exit right onto the entrance again without even slowing down.
Another fun DECUS was always New Orleans, where I compared the French Quarter to “an adult’s Disneyland”. That was where I met Linus in May of 1994 and convinced him (or he convinced me) to port Linux to the 64-bit DEC Alpha system.