Overdue Posting

Sorry for the slight pause in posts; it’s been over a year, eh? But seriously, beyond that, not taking a lengthy vacation prior to the conference has severely limited my free time. I spent most of the weekend enjoying myself, and have been exceptionally busy with the conference ever since.

All that said, I’ve had a few adventures that I’d like to share with you. Before I get into that though, I’ll present you with a quick paragraph or two about the conference and about my impressions of Mexico thus far.

DC2006 is now a little over halfway done, and it has been wonderful. It’s amazing to me that this is my fifth Dublin Core Conference. Each year, they keep getting better and better. The community and people are wonderful, and there is so much interesting work being done. The ideas that people here have, and the projects they are working on, are brilliant and very important. Some things are more practical than others, but I’m finally starting to come around on the pragmatism and importance of some of the more theoretical data modeling research that has become more and more prominent over the past few years. More on that later; this is supposed to be a travel log, so I’ll not bore you with discussions of RDF, semantic web development and metadata at the moment.

Mexico is a very interesting place. Everywhere I’ve been, the juxtaposition of abject poverty and conspicuous affluence has been very pronounced. It’s such an odd contrast, and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else in the word. Manzanillo is an interesting town, but I’d highly recommend staying away from all-inclusive resorts. Although I’m not staying at the Karmino Barcelo, the conference is here, and I’m spending most of my time here. I could be anywhere. It almost feels as much like Disney World as it does Mexico. The place is like a compound, intentionally made as difficult to enter or exit as possible, unless participating in an organized tour.

Fortunately, over the weekend, I was able to get out and about. Saturday, I stealthily snuck into the Barcelo and hung out with some OCLC folks and some Australians. We managed to find our way out of Fortress Barcelo, wandered the beach, stuck our feet in the water and made our way up to the street for some Margaritas. Sunday, a subset of the above group went on an adventure, making our way to El Centro Manzanillo for breakfast, finding our way to the bus station and taking a day trip to Colima’s capital, Colima. The contrasting lifestyles were remarkably pronounced there. Monday, a friend and I hired a guide, Jose, who drove us down to the Turtle Sanctuary and Nature Preserve. Thus far, that trip was the non-conference highlight. Along the way, there has been good food, adventure, misadventure, misplaced objects later found, and a great deal of fun. I’ll be processing my photos, and hopefully acquiring more photos from a friend or two, and will provide more details and photo documentation over the coming days and weeks.