I arrived in Prato, Italy, yesterday and even got picked up at the airport. We then went to Monash University where the conference would be. After some time waiting to help out we (me, Josh Berkus and David Fetter) gave up on that and went for a walk around town instead. Picked up Andreas (ads) and Stefan at the hotel. Several hours later we met the Italian guys again for dinner and drinks, and it seems they somehow got things sorted without us because they were ready to go. We also picked up the guys from Dalibo (France) at the same time. Finally, after we'd all had our food and drinks, the edb guys from the UK (Dave, Simon, Greg) arrived and we just had to go out for another couple of beers...
Anyway. Today the actual pgday has started (it's actually two days, regardless of what the name implies). Talks are actually translated in realtime, which works reasonably well but not perfect (as always). The amount of merchandise they have is impressive - t-shirts, notepads, pens, more t-shirts, pins etc. And Andreas brought mugs and those cool plush elephants he's been blogging about, so they're really well set. And they have an impressive amount of volunteers, so things are going very smoothly. Even the wireless network works today...
There's a big crowd here, so from what I can tell this is so far a big success. There's of course a large amount of Italian people here, but there's also a lot of people from abroad - as far as the US and Japan, and a good number from all around Europe. Let's hope the rest is as good as the start!
Oh, and if you're not here, there's live audio streaming available!
New comments can no longer be posted on this entry.