Well, let’s begin with the weekend, actually.
Our flight was Saturday morning and I managed to encounter Pedro Custódio (who will be speaking at the conference and got the same plane I did) and Alcides Fonseca (who was running late for his plane to Barcelona, to the TechED08). So, we (me and Gastão) arrived around 2 PM and being a bit disoriented, we took the first transport that seemed the right one to take us to the Hostel. Four hours, a MacDonald’s lunch and several means of transportation after, we got to the Meininger City Hostel. It’s pretty cozy and really good considering the cost.
We spent the rest of the weekend discovering Berlin. Saturday night we went to a nice carnival at the Potsdamer Platz, where there was a snow ramp that people could ski their way down in air doughnuts. As for Sunday, we massacred out feet and legs throughout Berlin. We saw the Jüdisches Museum first thing in the morning – and that kept us occupied pretty much the whole morning, it’s an excellent museum and it is quite affordable (€2,50 is the price for students). In the afternoon we checked out the Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag as well as the Unter den Linden avenue. We ended our afternoon with a nice hot chocolate and cappuccino in the Starbucks (apparently Alcides shared the same experience as we did, as it was out first Starbucks experience) near the Brandenburger Tor.
We took about 30 minutes to get from the hostel to the conference site, not very long. Conferences started around 9 AM, then there was this lunch hour and then some more conferences in the afternoon. I’d like to give particular attention to the presentation Creating Passionate Users, by Kathy Sierra, where she taught us to be more user-centric and always keep in mind a user driven application or service or whatever. She gave an amazing speech and really got the attention of everyone in the room for about 3 hours. Somewhere in the middle of the conference she would give nice tips on books to read, namely:
- Don’t Make Me Think;
- Flow;
- Computers as Theatre.
Finally, after that came the Tim O’Reilly welcome speech, when he began to speak his mind on Web 2.0, what is it, what people think it is and what it should become.
I still haven’t managed to solve the GPB / EUR problem. Here’s the situation: I’ve been charged the conference price in Pounds instead of Euros, as it was supposed to be. And I’ve not been the only one. In fact, today I spoke with Marcos, and he told that his problem has been solved through some heavy mailing pressure with the organization itself. I’m going to try to solve this issue tomorrow.
