Sat

Oct 29
2005

Nat Torkington

Nat Torkington

10 Years of Tags

Tags haven't always been associated with delicious. I'm moving back to New Zealand for good in two weeks time and while packing, I found the collected mass of badges and nametags from ten years of conference going:
Bed of Tags.jpg

In it you can find my badge from the second Perl Conference, which I think was the first that I chaired. I say "think" because this was around the time we were writing the Perl Cookbook, and everything's a blur.
Perl Conference 2.0.jpg

I was still working for Front Range Internet back then. You can see me move among jobs and hobbies by looking at the badges. By 2000 I was a trainer but put my company down as "Perl Toys", the small company I founded with my wife to sell Perl fridge poetry magnets (we found the last of them while packing in June and gave them to Allison Randal at OSCON):
OSCON 2000.jpg

Not that my badges were ever reliable indicators of my identity. I used to enjoy playing with the fields when registering for conferences:
YAPC 19100 Bond James Bond.jpg

We did a University of Perl tour in 2000, where we took Perl gurus on the road. I still have fond memories of that: it was the first time I met Mark Dominus's wife; the first time I'd been outside the airport in Los Angeles (I got to see the conference hotel AND a Cheesecake Factory, the full LA experience); my first time doing Whose Line Is It Anyway-style improv with Damian, Randal, and Dan Klein; and my first (and, regrettably, only) Daily Show screening in NYC with Jon Orwant (the ticket to the Daily Show is still attached to the UoP badge). Ah, good times:
UOP 2000.jpg

I have name tags from our Java conference (RIP), our Mac OS X conference (RIP), our Bioinformatics conference (RIP), the first five YAPCs, and many more. I'm not obsessive about them; this is the first time they've been out of the supermarket bag I threw them in. Instead, I use them like other people use digital photos: to remind me what I've done, who I met, what I was. I wonder what tags I'll accumulate in the next ten years.


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Comments: 8

  PeteCashmore [10.29.05 04:53 PM]

Right - I'm heading straight over to del.icio.us to tag this post with the tag "tag". Hehe.

  Campbell [10.29.05 05:22 PM]

Haha coming home nice.....Where in Nz you going?

  gnat [10.29.05 07:10 PM]

Leigh, about 45 minutes north of Auckland. It's where I grew up. I can't decide whether I'm more looking forward to the fish and chips or the pies :-)

  Campbell [10.29.05 07:58 PM]

Yeah I can believe they dont have pies overthere......:o)

  Korakot Chaovavanich [10.29.05 08:28 PM]

nametag will probably be a proper tag. A word meaning is frequently evolving. Who use the word 'computer' for a profession anymore?

  Tim O'Reilly [10.30.05 10:17 AM]

Lovely, I've always half-wished I saved my tags, every time I throw a new one away. It is an interesting way to remember our past.

Somehow reminds me of the fabulous Neruda line:

"Love is so short. Forgetting is so long."

  Roger Dennis [10.30.05 01:04 PM]

Nat - as a recently returned kiwi expat, I'd be interested to touch base with you on several things including 'coming home'.

For me, it was fish n' chips , or, more specifically, kumura chips!

If you get the chance to take a break from the mad packing frenzy, drop me a line. Thanks, Roger

  Giovani Broadway [11.16.06 10:08 PM]

Jonathan Ross is dubbed "risque" by Ofcom but not in breach of rules over an interview with David Cameron...

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