FiTC Amsterdam

Well, I’m back from Amsterdam and had quite an enjoyable time.

I wound up on the same flight as Chris and Rebecca Allen, though we didn’t sit near each other. But we hung out at Logan Airport beforehand and got the train into Amsterdam together on the other end. After I sat down, another guy squeezed in beside me and said, “I’ll apologize in advance. I have a really bad cough…” The flight was a red-eye, leaving at 7pm and getting into Amsterdam at 8am. He coughed the whole time. No rest for those sitting beside sick passengers.

We got to the hotel around 9am but it was way too early to check in. They were booked solid, so we had to wait until someone checked out. So we went to a pancake place and got some dutch pancakes. Wow. Back at the hotel, we ran into Branden Hall, in the same situation as us, waiting for a room and sleeping on a sofa in the lobby. Finally got our rooms and I had a shower and a nap and then wandered around the city for a couple hours alone.

Eventually I headed over to the venue, checked in, and bumped into Sam “Saffron” Agesilas Pastel. We had a good long talk for a couple hours I think. Then other people started showing up. Leffes and Duvels began to flow. A huge group of us went out to another pub, then dinner somewhere and then wound up at the opening night party. Had a great time catching up with Ralph, Koen, Tink, Marc, Aral, Rob, Mario, Sakri, Jared, Carlos, Stacey, and so many others. I headed back relatively early that night, not having much sleep in the last 36 hours.

The conference itself began on Monday. I couldn’t seem to wake up, but finally got down to see Ralph Hauwert’s session, which, as always, was rather mindblowing. Particularly since he had a full screen slide of my face up there for several minutes. 🙂

After lunch with Peter Hall and Tink, I saw Chris Allen and Dominick Accattato present their new Red5 stuff, then wandered the city a bit more and did some souvenir shopping.

After that, a bunch of us went to the Gollem, a small pub featuring 240 Belgian beers. I paid 12 Euro for a “Westvleteren”, named by some to be the best in the world. It was good. 🙂 Then another restaurant. Then a mad dash to the boat for the Influxis sponsored party with Sam DJing.

When I got off the boat I ran into Grant, Bobbi, Mike Chambers, Chafic, and Peter Hall. We wound up at another pub with exotic beers, the Wildemann. I headed to bed after that, as I was speaking in the morning.

Tuesday I slept in as late as I could, then made it to my own session. That went relatively well I think. I heard some good feedback anyway. After that, I had an interview scheduled. Kind of funny story there. Mike Chambers had asked me about doing an interview on AS3 a few weeks back. Someone else from Adobe emailed me to get that straight. Then I got various emails from other people asking me about the interview. They seemed to have their times screwed up and I was all confused about what time I would be interviewing. Turns out I had agreed to two entirely separate video interviews. The other one was for ActionScript Hero. Anyway, got that all sorted out and managed to make it to Mario Klingemann’s session, which was one I was really hoping to see. It rocked. Then went to James Eberhardt’s iPhone session, which was mostly stuff I already knew, but nice anyway.

Then more Duvels and Leffes at the venue cafe/bar. Then to the speaker dinner and party. From there, I wound up with Chambers, Grant, Bobbi, Chafic, and Peter Hall again, roaming the streets of Amsterdam hitting up various pubs and bars. We found an all night place that we stayed at til around 4am. Then started searching for food, unsuccessfully. We wound up with room service at Grant’s room.

So, yeah, I didn’t wind up at many sessions, but had a really great time hanging out with old and new friends. I had intended not to go too crazy this trip with the partying, and despite some late nights, I pretty much stuck to that. It was all about quality, not quantity. 🙂

Wednesday morning I again slept in as late as I could without jeopardizing my flight home. But when I got to the lobby to check out I learned that a Turkish airliner had crashed at Schiphol airport. A crowd of us gathered in reception trying to figure out if any planes were leaving that day, as most of us were flying home that day. As it turned out, my flight was about 2 hours late, but not too bad considering. The flight was almost empty, so I had plenty of space, and a power outlet under my seat! I watched movies and worked on my 360iDev session the entire flight. It was one of the best flights in recent memory.

Now I have a couple of days home before I head out to San Jose for 360iDev. Really looking forward to that too.

Oh, and I did promise to post my slides and files. Here they are.