On Sat, 26 May 2001, Nathan Torkington wrote:
> Stas Bekman writes:
> > Anyway, you can take tutorials without going to any conferences. My
> > tutorials are available from http://stason.org/talks/, Nat has posted his
> > tutorial's URL a few months ago and it should be available in the
> > archives. I suppose you can ask other folks that deliver mod_perl
> > tutorials at OSC to give you the URL of their talks.
>
> I'd just like to remind folks that the course-notes are not the only
> reason to attend the tutorial. The other is the face-to-face
> information exchange, which has a vastly higher bandwidth than email.
> I learned more practical information listening to the mod_perl guys
> drinking beer at ApacheCon than I did from the mailing list. I heard
> knowledge *emerge* from conversations ("wow, it sounds like most
> everyone modifies Apache::DBI for their own needs"). It was really
> cool.
Oops, my suggestion to read the handouts if you cannot come to the
conference didn't single out the improtance of going to the conferences.
My reply was based on the fact that the person cannot make it to the
conference. So by reading handouts you at least get to learn things. I'm
still having stocks of handouts that I plan to read from the last
ApacheCon. Obviously I couldn't go to all the talks that were given there.
And for two reasons. First is that I was either teaching myself or
listening to some other talk. Second is because I was talking to other
people at the time of some talks and it was way more important than
visiting the talk. I can always read the paper (given that it's a complete
handout and not just the slides) later on, but I won't be able to talk to
the person who leaves on a different continent face to face later on.
I'd be even more extreme and say that for me, conferences aren't about
going to the classes, but about peer networking. Of course some people
find it hard to learn from the books and papers, and it's important for
them to attend as many talks as they can to actually learn things. But
then we are all different.
For me, since I've started going to the conferences (3 years ago), the
whole process of communicating over email is very different now, because I
can map From: addresses to faces and characters, rather than to virtual
personalities. I've to admit that many people have two personalities
anyway, one for face-to-face communications and another one for email
communications. And boy, they can be different...
Enough of blurb, I hope to meet you all at OSC. You especially have no
excuse not to come after we have crafted a whole mod_perl track for you.
_____________________________________________________________________
Stas Bekman JAm_pH -- Just Another mod_perl Hacker
http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide http://perl.apache.org/guide
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://apachetoday.com http://eXtropia.com/
http://singlesheaven.com http://perl.apache.org http://perlmonth.com/
