DrupalCon Portland 2013: Day 3

 

If it weren't for the code sprints the following day, my third day at DrupalCon would have been much more wistful. I hugged Pazi before I left for the day, as when I returned in the evening, she would be half-way to California. Like yesterday, the keynote was right away in the morning. Unlike all the other keynotes, I didn't much care for this one. In fact, it made me a little annoyed. The speaker used to work at Apple (as well as other companies) and the slightly smug and superior attitude I expect from Apple fanpeople was here too. While the content of the presentation made excellent points, at one point he used moms as the example of non-technical people. Needless to say the discussion on how this was problematic exploded on Twitter shortly thereafter. I wanted to pay more attention to my first session, REST and Data Serialization, but the session began with too much detail about REST itself and less about serialization. By the time the speaker got to interesting Drupal bit, my attention had wondered off completely. I ducked out during questions and went to get lunch early. I ate less for breakfast that morning, and I had a BoF to attend in 15 minutes. Lunch was a picnic style meal of corn, apple cobbler, and BBQ steak. It was delicious, but I found myself worried about the steak being underdone. Granted, I like mine well done out of fear of food poisoning. I sat alone, quickly scarfing down the meal. Stuffed, I walked over to the Diversity BoF. I didn't know what to expect, but I felt I missed out on the Programming Diversity session on Tuesday and didn't want to miss out on this opportunity. It turned out to be the highlight of my day. It was more discussion and introduction. It was enjoyable to just talk with others. I was surprised that I was able to answer more than a few questions that were raised in the discussion about Drupal 8. I only hope I didn't shut down the discussion in the process. I was really looking forward to the next session -- The Plugin System Deep Dive. It was very technical, but unfortunately I didn't have enough of the background knowledge in order to understand all of what was being discussed. Still, it was a very good session. I couldn't find a session that was particularly interesting, but I found a BoF about contributing modules. My intent wasn't actually to submit a new module, but beg for help with my inability to make a release for the module I maintain, Flag_friend. Submitting a module is a fraught process for Drupal. Most modules don't make it, or sit forever waiting for review. If you've already been through the module submission process once, you never need to have a module reviewed again. The problem is that the number of modules that are worth submitting in Drupal 7 is frightfully few. It creates a huge barrier to new module maintainers. I was only able to become a maintainer by adopting a module that already existed. Thankfully, the team that runs the module submission process is actually very concerned about this issue and wants to change it to be more accessible. Eventually, I did get some help -- by someone I begged for help from on IRC months earlier, nonetheless! The closing session began shortly thereafter. I was planning on touring the exhibit booths one last time -- perhaps play a round on the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine -- but they had already closed the doors. I wondered over the Hall A1 and took a seat. The closing session saw the announcement of DrupalCon Prague, and DrupalCon Austin. Both were largely known ahead of time, so the announcement came as no real surprisequietly wondered if I would find myself at DrupalCon next year in Texas. I briefly allowed myself the fantasy of attending as a speaker -- something that is very much unlikely unless if I decide to change sometime in the next year. As the final session came to a close, they called for members of the Drupal Association to stand in appreciation. I stood with quietly embarrassed pride, as I had only joined earlier in the week. I spent the next hour and a half in the coder lounge, finishing one of my earlier DrupalCon Portland 2013 posts. When then finally needed to close the lounge, I debated going to the 24 hour coder lounge at the nearby DoubleTree. I decided against it and caught the tram back to my room rental. I needed something to eat, and was hoping that the Fred Meyer would have some ready to eat pizza from their deli. No luck. After going through several different options, I decided I didn't like any and decided to catch the tram to New Seasons several blocks away. Again, no pizza. I was so disoriented with hunger that one of staff behind the deli counter -- a kindly older woman -- patently waited for me to pick something. I grabbed a lemonade, a water, and some chicken pot pie. I devoured the meal, and sat for several minutes catching up on news and social networks. Later that evening, Pazi returned to the room. She reorganized her travel schedule, and then we walked to the New Seasons during a light drizzle. We picked up travel supplies for her continuing travel to California. We walked back. I was surprised that my legs were no longer complaining about all the walking. When we got back to the room, we did a little initial packing. I watched a video or two, and then we slept.