The conference is over, and it’s time to return to the mundane. It was a good time - formal talks, social activity and lots of idea exchanges. Actually a very good time. If I was independently wealthy, I’d probably spend most of my time attending conferences. I hear BSDCan 2010 will be on for next year, so at the very least I have that to look forward to.

I did not attend any of the highly technical presentations, as I’m effectively a BSD newbie (well, I used it for years in the 80’s), but I don’t really have much experience with the modern versions. That is a task for this year. I have the iso images, vmware, enough physical machines to brown out the neighborhood and time to learn.

I’ve been lurking for ages and not really gotten involved except at the periphery, so it’s time to jump in and help out. I guess I should play up my strengths first and get involved on the sysadmin side and see where that leads me. Could be fun, might be more work, but I will not know until I get started. Cat and Leslie’s talk on open source involvement was enough to get the desire woken up, so it’s time to see if I can contribute something other than the occasional blog post.

Not too much to say beyond that. I spent a lot more time talking with the attendees than I normally do, so I never managed to take my plethora of photos. I think I only have 13 that were even worth posting and some of them are a little out of focus. Next year I’ll do better.

If you want to see any photos from BSDCan 2009 or past ones I have attended, feel free to visit my other blog at http://scott5.vox.com where I store photos, audio and other useless miscellany

This post is effectively a duplicate of the one I wrote on that site. Might as well use the same words. This one being a slightly less public forum :) is where I make other commentary as well. I have noticed a personal malaise since attending the conference. I guess it has something to do with going from the effectively 24/7 job I was doing to a conference filled with geeks to the humdrum of a site maintenance contract. Going from high pressure to high interest to the humdrum. I’m sure I’ll get over it in a week or two when I’ve settled down, but changing functions / jobs / requirements / expectations rapidly leaves you feeling just a little disconnected. The good news is that I appear to have a lot more free time. I even had the time to put together a presentation for this month’s meeting. Who knows, I might even present at next years BSDCan.