Related link: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2005/

I had hoped to have a full report regarding the first day of OSCON’s Exhibit Hall, but alas I missed it. My trip from Ottawa to Portland started Tuesday at 9 AM PST, but due to weather and an exploding plane in Toronto (fortunately, not mine) I was still on standby in Ottawa Wednesday morning thinking I was going to miss OSCON entirely. The ticket agent had told me that I had about a snowball’s chance in hell in actually getting a seat on that first flight to Vancouver and that there weren’t any other available seats til Friday…

Somehow I made it on that plane and had hopes of making Portland by noon. However, the plane left late meaning I missed the 11 AM connection to Portland but I did manage to get standby for the 3 PM flight. In the lounge were several other OSCON attendees hoping to catch the conference, including Jason van Zyl who was giving the Maven BOF that evening and had paid a ridiculously high fare on an alternate carrier just in case standby didn’t pan out. Just as well as noone on standby made that flight…

So, I kissed the thought goodbye of helping to man the BSD booth that day and attending the author session. Finally made it to the Conference Center just before 8 PM, just in time to watch the last of the attendees straggle out.

I did get a chance to catch up with the guys from Offmyserver who had manned the booth that day. They had brought Beastie with them as well as a healthy supply of custom FreeBSD live CDs. Those, as well as the PC-BSD CDs, had proven very popular and the BSD booth had seen a lot of traffic. They had also given out several hundred pamphlets on BSD Certification, BSD Success Stories and BSDCan 2006.

I was disappointed to hear that Kris Moore, the PC-BSD developer, had only been available for Wednesday and I’d have to meet him in person another time. Once I was caught up, I stumbled to my hotel only to find that despite several phone calls and reassurances that the room would be held til I arrived, that it had not. After another ride on Portland’s impressive light rail system and a walk up an amazingly long hill dragging the belongings I had been dragging with me since Tuesday, I settled in for a few hours sleep.