Forgot to mention this -- two great things came out of Access 2007 regarding Evergreen usability at the install: Dan Scott's Evergreen test script, which makes sure you've got all your prerequisites in line for a smooth Evergreen install, and Bill Erickson's Gentoo/Debian Evergreen Makefile.
I've tested out Dan's script but have not messed with the makefile, but if I do any new installs or reinstalls of Evergreen, they'll likely be on Debian and I'll give it a go.
By far my biggest problem with Evergreen has been the install process, and these two go a long way towards sorting that out. If you've been reticent to try Evergreen because of the 40+ steps it takes to do an install, this might help.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
this is the last Access 2007 post you will ever read, ever
Not because it's the best one, but because the conference took place well over a week ago and all the best folks have already blogged about it. In my defense, I'm coming to this slowly because on the day after the conference ended I started getting a slight sore throat which then blew up into those monstrous, death dealing colds that I seem to get about once a year. Usually right after I travel. Which may be nature's way of telling me not to go anywhere, ever. So I spent most of last week in a fugue state, mildly hallucinating and dosed to the nines on Buckley's Mixture and cayenne.
But at any rate, Access 2007 was spot on terrific, and I had a completely amazing time. Interestingly enough -- or hey, maybe not so interesting; this is basically the first professional conference I've been to -- about 10-15% of my enjoyment was derived from the actual presentations themselves. This is not to denigrate them; the vast majority of them were really top notch stuff and I'm glad I stuck around to see them -- but what I really enjoyed was meeting and talking to people. Lots and lots and lots of people. What's great about Access is that it's a very healthy mix of tech people (90% of which are way smarter than me, to my shame) and non-tech people (ditto) and you get a hell of a synergy rocking when you get a pleasant mix. Witness Hackfest, where we had two groups related to Evergreen stuff that eventually merged into one group, and had as the tech crew two folks from Equinox, the always dynamic and intrepid Dan Scott, and Brandon Uhlman from BC PINES. Also folks from Victoria were there and had great questions to ask. I was there too natch, but mostly to watch -- Access 2008 Hackfest planning is on my plate, and I wanted to figure out what worked and what could be improved.
Brandon, by the way, suffered a hell of a lot of inconvenience on his project -- installing and configuring Evergreen in a day -- not because of problems with Evergreen, but with Gentoo amd64. He eventually smashed through them and went on to have a good presentation later.
Also present: a healthy contingent of code4libers, and oh yeah, an obscure librarian from Vermont. Like I said, top notch.
A pleasant surprise for me -- a substantial presence of non-evil vendors.
On to Access 2008. You will be there. There's no other option.
But at any rate, Access 2007 was spot on terrific, and I had a completely amazing time. Interestingly enough -- or hey, maybe not so interesting; this is basically the first professional conference I've been to -- about 10-15% of my enjoyment was derived from the actual presentations themselves. This is not to denigrate them; the vast majority of them were really top notch stuff and I'm glad I stuck around to see them -- but what I really enjoyed was meeting and talking to people. Lots and lots and lots of people. What's great about Access is that it's a very healthy mix of tech people (90% of which are way smarter than me, to my shame) and non-tech people (ditto) and you get a hell of a synergy rocking when you get a pleasant mix. Witness Hackfest, where we had two groups related to Evergreen stuff that eventually merged into one group, and had as the tech crew two folks from Equinox, the always dynamic and intrepid Dan Scott, and Brandon Uhlman from BC PINES. Also folks from Victoria were there and had great questions to ask. I was there too natch, but mostly to watch -- Access 2008 Hackfest planning is on my plate, and I wanted to figure out what worked and what could be improved.
Brandon, by the way, suffered a hell of a lot of inconvenience on his project -- installing and configuring Evergreen in a day -- not because of problems with Evergreen, but with Gentoo amd64. He eventually smashed through them and went on to have a good presentation later.
Also present: a healthy contingent of code4libers, and oh yeah, an obscure librarian from Vermont. Like I said, top notch.
A pleasant surprise for me -- a substantial presence of non-evil vendors.
On to Access 2008. You will be there. There's no other option.
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