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:
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.
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):
Not that my badges were ever reliable indicators of my identity. I used to enjoy playing with the fields when registering for conferences:
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:
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
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 :-)
nametag will probably be a proper tag. A word meaning is frequently evolving. Who use the word 'computer' for a profession anymore?
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."
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
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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.