Balisage 2009 - Beer and Demo

Q: What is the preferred accompaniment for demos at a technical conference?
A: Why, beer and free food, of course! (Save your divergent opinions about that statement, guys!)

On August 11th, Mark Logic was generous enough to provide great quantities of liquid and solid nourishment at the Brewtopia pub in Montreal. The demo format was simple: 5 minutes each to plugin and go. Over a dozen eager folks braved the cramped space and a hot room, not to mention an increasingly rowdy audience (funny how beer contributes to that). The contestants and the names of their demos follow:

• Micah Dubinko: Zero to App in 5 minutes
• Michael Sokolov: Bibilical Studies
• Bruce Bauman: Conceptual Models to XML Schema
• Josh Lubell: Quality of Design
• Mohamed Zergaoui: XML Prague and XProc Designer
• Uche Ogbuji: Freemix
• Markos Z(?): XQuery in the Browsercreain
• David Lee: One-Line Web Server
• Quinn Dombrowski: Visualizing Bulgarian Dialect Data
• Betty Harvey: Archival Description (NARA)
• Steve Newcomb: IEML Parser
• John Snelson: Higher Order Functions in XQuery 1.1

[Also, Vyacheslav Zholudev volunteered to demo Presentational OMDoc but unfortunately couldn't get a working laptop in the allotted time.]

Betty Harvey (Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc.) and Quinn Dombrowski received identical cheers twice in succession (as measured by the highly scientific decibel meter) so they were declared co-winners, splitting the cash prize. By sheer coincidence, they were the only two female demonstrators. Draw your own conclusions. Everyone who participated was awarded a Mark Logic t-shirt.

Thanks to Mark Logic, especially host Norm Walsh and his colleagues, for a fun and "educational" evening. Thanks also the Brewtopia wait staff who had to wend their way through the tightly packed crowd all night.