Monument

Today was a day of un-conferences, where people attending the conference made up the programme. It was a day of being given notebooks, as you've already heard. And it was a day of packing everything up.

After things were cleared away, some people went to watch the Ireland v Norway match, but we went to a brewpub called Porterhouse for beer and pies.

It's been a memorable and useful few days. Back to Philly tomorrow morning.

I think my talk went reasonably well in the end, though there were no questions. I'm not sure whether the audience were entirely satisfied or catatonic with hearing me drone on.

After the talk, I went off and hacked for a bit to clear my head until it was time to go to the brewery; I sat next to Michael Meeks on the way down there, and we talked about office suites.

When we arrived, they had a pretty comprehensive exhibition about how they make Guinness: I wandered around that, reading about hops and barley, until I noticed that people were vanishing upstairs. Well, toucan play at that game, so I followed. My goodness. There was a bar with people walking around handing out pints. There, Will gave me the useful information that Guinness Special Export is much more tasty than the ordinary kind. After a rather large number of pints of that, a rather good U2 cover band appeared, so we all danced. (Thank you for the whiskey, Chani.) I feel surprisingly well today, apart from a slight headache. I suppose Guinness is good for you.

Huge thanks to the organisers, who have certainly shown themselves capable of… no, that line is far too obvious.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of fascinating people here at the MeeGo conference. I've been here less than a day and already had useful and memorable conversations. Even when I was waiting at the gate at Philadelphia, two people spotted me, realised I was going to the conference, and came over to talk about tech stuff.

The flight was fairly uneventful, and I slept much of the way. On arrival, we were told it was 34° outside, and I wondered why I'd brought my coat, until I found that US Airways seem to be unfamiliar with Celsius: it's a bit chilly. I took a taxi to the hotel, with a very chatty driver who gave me a brief overview of surviving in Dublin, told me where to find good beer, pointed out landmarks, and passed me a tissue when I sneezed. The hotel didn't have my room ready, so I wandered off.

I soon found myself at St Bartholomew's. A friendly usher (from Leicester, but who had lived in the area for years) welcomed me and told me that they were considered very Anglo-Catholic for the Church of Ireland, but middle-of-the-road by Church of England standards. I think he was mistaken: they would have been considered well within high-church anywhere I've ever been in England. Everyone was friendly, and gave me coffee and biscuits.

Back at the hotel, they were very rushed, with the whole conference taking over the place and then a football match on top of that, and they still didn't have my room. I went to lunch and came back later, and they gave me the key: I went upstairs, took a shower, and fell asleep. After a while Ian turned up, so we explored the hotel for a while, but then he had work to do. Soon after I ran into Rob, Will, Gary, Rodrigo, and others, and we went out for a drink in some random pub near Trinity College, which turned into dinner. And now I'm back at the hotel writing it all up.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.