Greetings from Porto Alegre, Brasil!
As I write this from breakfast, the sun is coming up over the city. I'll soon be joined by the ten of us who have traveled here to represent Squeakland Foundation and our respective Etoys organizations. Most of us flew in yesterday, then met last night for a wonderful dinner hosted by Intel, one of the conference sponsors.
It was very nice seeing everyone last night. While we speak frequently together through Skype and Qwaq, there's nothing quite like meeting in person. At dinner we had time to discuss ours lives outside Etoys, getting to know each other in a way that's much harder to do through the Internet.
Today should be quite a day. At this point, more than 280 people have registered for the conference. Given that the main conference room seats 250, it might be standing room only.
We plan to chat throughout the conference on Etoys chat channel (http://chat.squeakland.org ), which you can read later at the chat log (http://squeakland.org/sm/storybot ). Stop by and say hello so you can be part of the event, from wherever you happen to be now. Have a look at the schedule (http://squeakland.org/squeakfest/brasil/schedule/ ) to follow along. We'll be getting the English translation of the schedule up soon.
And remember, we're following up this conference in a few weeks with another at UCLA in Los Angeles. Please come join us there. You can register (http://squeakland.org/squeakfest/usa/register/) on the Squeakfest USA website.
Special thanks to Marta Voelcker and the rest of her team for organizing this event. Their hard work really shows.