Traumatized the previous day by missing a meal, skipped the keynote for a good breakfast with my roomie Julie (blog|twitter), Colin (blog|twitter), and Josh (blog|twitter). After a decent amount of food and giggling we head over to community zone for a few.  Then I went over to Mark Broadbent’s (blog|twitter) session “READPAST & Furious: Transactions, Locking, and Isolation”.  I was really glad I went, he did a really great job.  I was really enjoying him talking about how implicit transactions are “evil muthas” but had to leave a bit early to get over to help setup for the WIT Luncheon.  On my way out I finally crossed paths with Jimmy May (blog|twitter)!  It is next to impossible to find one person at Summit but finally caught him.

Mr. Broadbent doing a great session.

Me and the man, Mr. Jimmy May

I’ve been involved for a little while in WIT so was really looking forward to the Luncheon.  I go and assist in setting up the tables but things were in fairly decent order so it wasn’t too frantic or difficult.  Grab some food and get prepped to watch the discussion.  This year was the 10th anniversary for the WIT Luncheon so the topic was “Women in Technology: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?”.  It was really great to hear how it has grown over the years.  The panelists were Stefanie Higgins, Kevin Kline (blog|twitter), Kendra Little (blog|twitter), Denise McInerney (twitter), and Jen Stirrup (blog|twitter).  Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter) was the moderator.  It was really great discussion and the panelists did a great job.  I thought some of the live questions were a bit redundant though…seemed a few of the where just the same “how do we get more women in technology” vague question.  I was really glad Wendy caught a great one via Twitter of “what do you do to silence the critics of WIT initiatives?”.  Wow too much goes through my head on that one so will have to save for a future blog post.  I absolutely loved Kendra’s response of “Haters gonna hate”.  I did have one complaint of the Luncheon in that they should have wrapped it up at least 10 minutes before they did.  It didn’t end until the next set of sessions were set to start.  I tried to get into two sessions after it but they were full by the time I got there.  So I roamed and chatted for another session which was completely fine.

WIT Luncheon

I ended up finding a quiet corner and had a video chat with the family.  Was having so much fun seeing my family that ended up running over into the next session.  After that roamed and chatted more until the last session which I caught the BI Power Hour session by the group of Matt Masson (blog|twitter), Chuck Heinzelman (twitter), Matthew Roche, Patrick LeBlanc (blog|twitter), Peter Myers, and Sean Boon (blog|twitter).  I had never attended one but had a few folks mention it to me and oh so glad they did.  I have never in my life attended a technical session that laughed so much in.  I had tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard!  Also imagine is one of those that just isn’t the same on the DVD as it was in person.  It was a really fun session guys, great job!

The hilarious BI Power Hour

After sessions were done, Julie and I grabbed a bus to head over to the Community Appreciation party at the EMP Museum.  It was a bit of a change up as they normally have this party at Gameworks.  I LOVED the change!  This place was great!  They had live band karaoke going which a lot of folks seemed to enjoy.  I wasn’t digging the karaoke area.  At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old geezer, it was too loud and crowded.  I didn’t yell at any of the young kids for their loud rock and roll but did avoid it other than in passing.  I took in the sites of the museum though and was a bit like a little kid.  They had some sci fi areas with some Star Wars paraphanelia which made me just damn giddy.  There was also a great area with horror movie exhibits.  I thought I was going to lose my mind when I saw they had a zombie suit from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.  There were also plenty of quiet areas for chatting so was really great…big thumbs up PASS on that party!

Me giddy at some Star Wars stuff at EMP community appreciation party

My daughter’s little traveling buddy and Thriller costume. How cool is that?!