EVENT
Stonehenge Wednesday Blowout Parties
- Starting in 2000 at TPC4/OSCON2 in Monterey, Bill Harp and I launched a long-standing tradition of throwing massive Stonehenge parties during conference week.
- These were never "official" OSCON events. Bill organized them, which made them significantly cheaper and allowed us to be much "more flexible."
- Even so, Tim O'Reilly attended at least one of them, and Derrick Story began shooting photographs of our parties for the official OSCON coverage pages.
- Other event organizers soon began planning their conference calendars around us, ensuring that our Wednesday night slot (it was always Wednesday!) was kept completely clear of conflicting parties.
- We always designed the Stonehenge party to be the absolute blowout party of the year.
- At the time, Stonehenge's standard corporate training rate was around $20,000 for a week-long class. We realized that if the party brought us just one or two new clients who booked a few training sessions, the party would fully pay for itself.
- One of the most legendary gatherings was the Alpaca Party to celebrate Alpaca book (Intermediate Perl). We literally rented and brought a live, real-life alpaca into a downtown bar.
- When organizing these wild events, Bill and I operated under a very practical motto: "It is much easier to seek forgiveness than to ask permission."
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.