The last three days I attended and gave talks at Quinto Encuentro Linux in Valparaíso, Chile. The conference was hosted at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María which has a nice campus with a wonderful view over the bay. The conference is over now and I have to say that it was a great event. In fact, it was one of the best conferences I've been to this year. All talks except for Peter H Salus's and mine were in Spanish so I don't know how well they went, but my impression of the whole event is really good. They expected 400 visitors but close to 700 turned up, and the whole organization was fantastic. They had lots of people who were constantly there for the speakers and it was clear that someone would be there if you needed anything. To some degree, it was like in the military because they were really serious about their schedule, just with the major difference that they were very friendly. Before I arrived, they sent me a detailed schedule for every day, like this:
Thursday 21 07:30 Breakfast. 08:00 Pick up from Hotel by organizers. 08:15 Arrival to UTFSM. 13:05 Go to F-106. 13:10 Get to lunch to El Caleuche. 14:20 Return from El Caleuche. 14:30 Arrival to UTFSM. …
The amazing thing is that they managed to stick to their schedule fairly closely. The other funny thing was that the visitors treated me like a real celebrity. Normally at conferences, maybe one or two people ask me for an autograph or picture, but at this conference literally several dozens of people wanted their picture taken with me. I was happy to do it, but I have to say that it felt pretty surreal. Anyway, I had a really great time there and I'm thankful to the organizers for their great effort.