I'd not made it to one of these before, to the best of my recollection. Diana was able to astound me quite easily, with tales of The Bodyguard, a suffragette posse that knew the jujitsu of Victorian England, all about canes and parasols, called bartitsu. You've got to be kidding. No for real. She and I both whipped out suffragette photos on our cells (she had more, I just had the Dora Marsden shot).
I reconnected with quite a few of the good folks of Portland's open source community. I've always felt Portlandia steered clear of such as Adam the Robot and other touch stone hallmarks of the world community known as geekdom. That doesn't immediately resonate I realize. To some, a geek is a tawdry side show act, another trafficker in snake oil. I understand. There's a dark underbelly to everything, why not be proud of a dark side?
We had a raffle, free to enter, so I guess not a fundraiser really. More like potlatch economics in that the chiefs got to thump their brands, their drums. Open Bastion gave out the top prize, a Nexus 7. That's Steve's entity, the producer behind some of these conferences I write about.
Urban Airship seemed to have its act together, as did our open source denizens, who dutifully shared potluck. I filled up on bean burritos (home cooked pintos in my crock pot) before the event, so as not to crave the smorgasbord too gluttonously. The strategy worked, plus I'd burned 1000 calories earlier, at least. Even with the beers, it was probably a net loss day, and that's a good thing when you're in my ballpark, stats-wise.
This was not a night for presentations, no Ignite format. Ward Cunningham was there, as was Amber Case, people with high link counts, as in "weighty Friends" (rough translation into subculture-speak). Steve and Ward hung out. I've had some good times around Ward, at that Barcamp especially, but other times too.
Weird donuts were a feature, with the FireFox logo.
Steve heard a rumor that Tiger Bar on Broadway specialized in Blues on Tuesdays, so we made our way there by way of Deschutes Brewery. No, they'd discontinued Blues some months ago and Tuesdays were movie nights, and tonight was The Watchmen.
We'd sort of barged in, in the middle. Clearly some characters were having fun. I don't pretend to be an expert all of a sudden. I only just got started on The Avenguers, gimme a break.
Parking is no piece of cake in the Pearl on a Tuesday night. I ended up quite far from the venue, but didn't mind. The walks in semi-rain were refreshing.
Waling at night in a city is a pleasure I enjoy.
Steve had been planning to include some Raspberry Pi's in the raffle, but Michelle's read was we had enough to give away and she hadn't had enough chance to promote these exotic specimens. I'd brought a number of them in my brief case.
She ended up with two, and during the raffle ad libbed that this five year old girl and her family might want one, as raffle winners, which they did. I appeared mysteriously from the crowd and handed them one from my briefcase. Steve let me carry them (he's their owner).
