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: