The Conference Begins

Tuesday dawned with much less jetlag than I had expected, but I wasn't quite right as rain, either. So I dragged myself out of bed and went out for a run along the river, through the Botanical Garden, through the harborside boardwalk, and then along streets back to the hotel. After that, I felt better, and headed to the Conference Centre to register and start talking with people.

Among the people I saw in the first few minutes were Josef Dietel, from the W3C, and Simon Phipps, from IBM's Java group in Hursley, England (note how Simon carefully ensured that the IBM logo was visible on the backpack).

The theme of WWW7 is The Gathering Place, and we decided to designate this particular corner of the Conference Centre as the unofficial official Gathering Place for the duration of the conference. I inaugurated the spot by sitting there and thinking deep thoughts for a few moments. Then I headed back to the hotel for lunch. It had started to rain, but I had very carefully brought an umbrella with me to Australia; unfortunately, I had equally carefully left it in my room, so it was dry and I wasn't.

Microsoft sponsored the evening reception; they did a nice job with potables, but not such a good job with food (they ran out before I got any!). Luckily, they had also arranged to bring in some native Australian animals to distract us; they had birds and some kind of pig, but my favorite was the koala. I even got to pet one.

Tomorrow starts early with the first plenary session, so good night for now.

Tomorrow: An Opening Ceremony

The trip, day-by-day:

 Getting There is Much Less than Half the Fun  Saturday/Monday, April 11/13 Airplanes and Airports
 Brisbane, as seen through a haze of jetlag  Monday, April 13 Brisbane
 The Conference Begins  Tuesday, April 14 Brisbane
 An Opening Ceremony  Wednesday, April 15 Brisbane
 A Brief Escape  Thursday, April 16 Brisbane
 The Conference Ends  Friday, April 17 Brisbane
 Koalas and Kangaroos and Wallabies, Oh My!  Saturday, April 18 Brisbane
 To Melbourne  Sunday, April 19 Brisbane/Melbourne
 A Day of Meetings  Monday, April 20 Melbourne
 DOM, Day 2  Tuesday, April 21 Melbourne/Sydney
 A Rainy Day in Old Sydney  Wednesday, April 22 Sydney
 Another Rainy Day in Old Sydney  Thursday, April 23 Sydney
 It can't be Sydney -- it's not raining!  Friday, April 24 Sydney
 The Longest Day  Saturday, April 25 Sydney/Los Gatos