I wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town.

Patti Smith is right, more than any other US city I have visited, Portland feels different. Although living in Cambridge, which sometimes feels like where books were invented, might give me a warped sense of a place.

I have visited Portland a few times previously and I feel comfortable every time I arrive at PDX. Sure the place still suffers from the american obsession with the car but similar to New York you can rely on public transport to get about.

On this occasion my visit was for the Debian Conference which i was excited to attend having missed the previous one in Switzerland. This time the conference has changed its format to being 10 days long and mixing the developer time in with the more formal sessions.

The opening session gave Steve McIntyre and myself the opportunity to present a small token of our appreciation to Russ. The keynote speakers that afternoon were all very interesting both Stefano Zacchiroli and Gabriella Coleman giving food for thought on two very different subjects.

Several conferences in the past have experienced issues with sponsored accommodation and food, I am very pleased to report that both were very good this time. The room I was in had a small kitchen area, en-suite bathroom, desks and most importantly comfortable beds.

The food provision was in the form of a buffet in the Ondine facility. The menu was not greatly varied but catered to all requirements including vegetarian and gluten free diets.

Some of us went on a visit to the Evergreen air and space museum to look at some rare aircraft and rockets. I can thoroughly recommend a visit if you are in the area.

These are just the highlights of the week though, the time in the hack-labs was productive with several practical achievements Including:
- Uploading new packages reducing the bug count
- Sorting out getting an updated key into the Debian keyring.

Overall I had a thoroughly enjoyable time and got a lot out of the conference this year. The new format suited me surprisingly well and as usual the social side was as valuable as the practical.

I hope the organisers have recovered enough to appreciate just how good a job they did and not get hung up on the small number of things that went wrong when the majority of things went perfectly to plan.