ApacheCon 2008 - New Orleans
November 3, 2008 - November 7, 2008
Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street

What a great conference to attend:  Informative and entertaining.  Not many "geek" conferences are considered fun, but ApacheCon 2008 in New Orleans was a blast!  Mainly becasue on Nov. 6th at 7:30pm, HotWax Media and Brainfood.com put together a New Orleans Style funeral with marching brass band and marched down Canal Street with police escort. This funeral was to celerbate the death of commercial proprietary closed-source software.  A few people carried a fake casket behind a 8 member brass band leading about 200 conference attendees and some resturant/bar patrons to the Howling Wolf bar to watch the Rebirth Brass Band do their thing.  They're an amazing band, they coved many songs and I recommend checking them out if you get the chance.  It was a great experience; definately one I will never forget. 

The speakers at the conference were great.  All were prepared, no one was fumbling through their slides or notes; there were no audio/video troubles.  I was able to audio record some of the sessions and many of the presenters provided their presentation materials.  I am already looking forward to the ApacheCon2009 in Oakland, CA   Thanks to Charel Morris for the personal help in getting my conference pass.