Have you ever seen The Warriors? When I walked in at the start of the ALT.NET Conference, I couldn’t help but think of the scene in that movie where the gangs are all gathered together. Steven “Doc” List was Cyrus, drawing the crowd in. And as I looked around the room, I heard Cyrus saying, “We got the Saracens sitting next to the Jones Street Boys. We’ve got the Moonrunners right by the Van Cortlandt Rangers. Nobody is wasting nobody.” Only instead of Saracens and Jones Street Boys, we had Jamie Cansdale and Scott Guthrie. Instead of Moonrunners and Van Cortlandt Rangers, we had Jeff Brown and James Newkirk.
Thankfully, nobody shot Cyrus this time. And the unity in the room didn’t disintegrate into a free-for-all. Instead, we had a spirited fishbowl debate on what ALT.NET is. We had as many session topic proposals as we could come up with. We had, dare I say, a palpable excitement. I think that within the first few minutes, we all knew we were in for a very special weekend.
Can you dig it?