My First Tech Conference

2023-10-18

The past two days I attended my not just my first technology conference, but my first open source conference: All Things Open 2023. I was able to get free tickets by volunteering for a Linux Foundation project my company is on the governing board for - I never used the technology, but it seemed cool and I got to learn a bit about it. Nonetheless, getting free tickets was cool because the tickets were a surpising $200 for the 2-day pass, but with the t-shirts and quality of "free" lunches this was reasonable in hindsight.

Overall, I had a fantastic experience and it was great to be reminded that there are people just as enthusiastic as open source, and software in general, as myself in the real world and not just on the web. Work got me a little down prior to the conference working with lame tech and others who appear not to be as excited as me about tech - which if I was working with my team's tech stack for as long as them, I would likely lose all joy as well. So, it was very refreshing to be surrounded by such good energy when talking about things that most people can give a shit about.

The experience gave me a sense of community that I believe I have been deprived of since the pandemic started in early 2020. I went off to school in the fall of 2020 in the hopes to meet others like myself with the same passions, only to be sent off again into a 2-dimensional hell: Zoom.