DConf 2013 - what a show!

[Mike Parker]

On Monday, 6 May 2013 at 02:07:39 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:


>
> Yeah. It was very weird to meet a lot of the people around here 
> in person. Now
> I have faces (and voices!) to go with many of the posts around 
> here. It makes
> a surprisingly large difference. In some cases, now I can even 
> hear how some of
> the posters would say what they wrote in their own voice and 
> accent. That
> alone is going to have a large impact on me.

+100. I loved the presentations, but being able to talk to people 
face-to-face had a much different effect on me than I 
anticipated, and not just in matching voices & faces with forum 
posts. I mentioned to a few people that given where I live and 
that I don't work in the tech industry, I never have a chance to 
discuss anything related to my programming hobby, let alone D. 
Talking face-to-face with so many different people about this 
stuff really motivated me to put more effort into my D projects.

One of my big time sinks is my interest in the free online 
courses offered by coursera.org and edx.org. I've signed up for 
several over the past few months. I've enjoyed studying them and 
have learned a good deal from some of them, but it's all purely 
recreational and has really consumed my free time to a degree I 
underestimated. My time would be better used writing D articles, 
working on Derelict, and getting one of my abandonware games 
completed.

This conference has really restored my enthusiasm for all things 
D. And looking forward to DConf 2014 is going to sustain it.