I keep thinking I should go to YAPC::NA. I’ve had co-workers suggest it. I can get myself there, I can get the time off work. All the blogs I’ve read say it’ll be great!

I don’t see the greatness on the web anywhere, though.

I see lots of stories about how the best part was the hallway, and talking to all the people, and the amazing things you’ll talk about and the connections you’ll make. If I were the kind of person who actually talked to people like that, maybe it would be. Maybe it even will, if I don’t go hide instead.

The descriptions of the talks are minimal. I haven’t found what I consider a really readable schedule, by time and date. I found a list of talks with a note, “The time and place of the following talks haven’t been decided yet.”. How can I tell if the things I want will be all at the same time? (The first three things listed are “Lightning Talks” which I simply have no enthusiasm for, despite many people saying they’re wonderful.)

The web site says “training and hackathon” on days before and after. What are those going to be? Am I interested? I can find a hint about part of the hackathon – it’s a topic I don’t have any interest in. What about the training? What? Who from? How much money? Will it help me, or do I know too much?

I’ve given two day Perl classes myself, plus spoken to the local Perl user’s group on Template Toolkit, DBIC, Catalyst, and a recent one on Cross-Platform Perl (which I have YET to put up – will fix that!). Maybe I should be a speaker, but what would I speak on when the creators of several of these technologies will be on hand to do so with far more accuracy and panache?

I found a Tweet from the 6h of May that says they’re deciding what the training is soon. Meaning: They hadn’t decided yet. It linked to a tumblr – one using the 2013 advertisers and city and dates – which said the main blog would have all the details on 10 May when they’d selected.

Today is 19 May. The last post on the main blog was 28 February. The front page still lists the early bird price, and hasn’t got any information. The Call For Sponsors is “coming soon”. I’d say the conference is soon – they’d better have sponsors by now.

Another thing I find in searching the Internet is a lot of kerfuffle from the last couple of years about the Code of Conduct. I can’t tell if that’s been addressed or not. The Code they have seems… light. While may not need the protection of the code as much as others (meaning, I’m a large white male, who’s got a USENET hardened skin, and thus not likely to have too much problem) I don’t like that no one was willing to stand up and say, “Enough! We Are Fixing This.” and clearly doing something about it. That leaves me with yet another poor opinion of the conference. This shouldn’t be a hard thing to solve, but ignoring it and leaving the (notoriously poor) status quo isn’t the way to go about it.

This conference isn’t telling people things. How can people decide to go if nobody tells them what will be at the convention? These things need to be published, often, and loudly. The site needs to be updated consistently and kept current! I realize that actually telling people about the convention you’re hosting is a lot of work, but if you want anyone to come, that’s what you’ll have to do.

I’d better decide soon.