Smalltalks 2010

People have been blogging about the Smalltalks 2010 conference for nearly a week now. Before too much time passes, I need to throw in my accolades for the conference held in Concepción del Uruguay.

In particular, to express gratitude to all the long hard work that the Argentinian natives such as Emilio, Gabi, Hernan, Jorge, Esteban, Andres, Leandro, Alfonsina and other unsung heros who I'm missing. Your efforts made not only a really cool conference, but also made it possible for someone like me--who would have otherwise been stressed about other things--to really enjoy the conference, both its enthusiasm and technical content.

My first Smalltalk connected conference was OOPSLA 1994, held in Portland. I've been to a number of OOPSLAs, ESUGs, Smalltalks, Camp Smalltalks, and Smalltalk Solutions since then. Over the years, I've heard of lots of cool things people do WITH Smalltalk. Lots of ideas about how to best use it. But never, have I been to a conference, where there was so much talk about what to do TO Smalltalk. From Gilad's talk which pushes us to think about where we ought to go, especially with regards to modularity, to four (not 1, or even 2 or 3, but 4!) talks about original and innovative VM work (in some ways there was even more actually), to other talks such as the xTreams talk which pushes the idea of a completely brand new approach to streams (much more than just a refactoring). Just all and all a really cool conference.