OSCON's new digs

Once again, OSCON started in California for me -- I ran into geeks headed to OSCON at the San Jose airport and started chatting about the conference. Right away we started speculating about its new location at the Convention Center, leaving behind the cramped Marriott Hotel.

Once I got to Portland it was clear the new location is going to be a winner -- the Portland MAX stops right in front of the convention center, which makes OSCON by far the easiest conference to attend. The convention center looks brand new and is plenty spacious, which is a great improvement over last year.

A brief look a the map of the exhibit hall confirms that everything is going to be bigger this year. The show floor will be huge compared to previous years and it looks like a lot more companies will be exhbiting. There also seemed to be a lot more pre-conference chatter and invitations to parties flying about -- it all shapes up to be an exciting year.

When I attended the afternoon tutorial, I was really pleased with the size of the rooms -- I think we'll see fewer people standing in the back of the room for popular presentations. And given how filled the rooms were, I think attendance of OSCON may also be looking up.

The first day started strong -- I'm looking forward to taking it all in. Stay tuned, I'll be blogging here all week.

Made it to OSCON yet? What do you think of the new location?