[SGVLUG] My Thoughts on SCALE 11x

[James McDuffie]

I thought SCALE was good this year, probably better than last year.. The
two keynote speakers I saw (Saturday, Sunday) presented topics that are
topically relevant and well presented. Garrett's talk on UEFI was a
great summary of the state of that standard and what it means for the
Linux community from someone in the trenches. My only complaint is that
he pandered too much to the audience with his constant references to
drinking. Rankin's talk was as good as his technical and journalistic
writing. He brought together, by metaphor, how the 3D printing community
can be seen through the lens of how the Linux community developed from
its early days.

I think the quality of the individual speakers was on average better
than last year. I only feel asleep from sheer tiredness and not boredom.
Or it could be that I was better about picking the talks that would most
interest me than I was last year. I only had issue with one talk that
seemed to be more about how great KVM is at IBM than anything
technically relevant to me. 

Game night was lots of fun, but there seemed like there were many more
people than last year. I think the board game and table top game rooms
should have more space next year as that was were most people
congregated. I played laser tag, and it does need a lot of space, but
maybe the logistics could be done a bit better next time so as to not
crowd people not playing it or the video games into rooms with not
enough space.

Overall I had fun and came away with tons of new information and ideas
to try out. My only overall complaint is that a bunch of people in a
room create so much heat. But, as I've been constantly told, you can't
change the laws of thermodynamics.