I've spent the past week out in Miami for ApacheCon, and thought I'd share a few things.

Getting there

We flew direct out of Heathrow on BA. Eight hours in cattle class world traveller is never going to be a fun experience, but BA do lay on a decent quality and quantity of food and drink even in the back. Getting through US Customs was a bit of a pain, but even though the automatic system diverted us for extra review, it didn't take very long (obviously we'd applied for our ESTAs and had them approved before going).

America

It's worth reading up on US tipping culture before going (and noting that you need to write the amount on the bill when they bring it if you're tipping by card). I'd not been to the states before, but with that knowledge pre-consumed, it was all pretty much as expected. The Americans are a lot more patriotic than us, and have their flag all over the place, including at the airport and some impressively huge ones hanging off buildings. On average, I found the customer service and general standard of friendliness higher than in the UK.

120v

American sockets put out 120 volts, not the 240 we're used to in Europe. Every device I took with me was labelled as coping with either, and did, but it's worth checking the label before you plug it into an adapter.

Money

It's worth looking up the sales taxes for the state(s) you're visiting - be aware that, often, none of the prices you see quoted will include them.

Chip and pin is present in some places, but a lot of retailers are still using the old magnetic stripe, meaning they can wander off with your card and come back with the receipt for your payment (Monzo works everywhere as you'd expect, and it's handy to have a card you can load just-in-time and see instant notifications for when the security is rather slacker than in the UK).

Uber (yes, I know, contentious stuff) Just Works if you've got an account created in the UK (and if the city you're visiting is covered, of course). They may have a sketchy reputation in some quarters, but it's damn useful being able to set up your work card and charge taxis directly to it without having to faff getting a receipt from the driver and claiming it as out of pocket expenses. Indeed, armed with this capability, cash was barely necessary for the whole six day trip.

The event

I've been to ApacheCon in Europe twice before, but not to the US. I got the impression there were a few more people and tracks of talks than we had in Seville last autumn. The standard of the speakers was generally very high (I hope I didn't lower the average too much) and there were an interesting bunch of vendors giving out swag and potentially useful information about their products and services. We also did some good networking and had lunch every day with what one of my colleagues aptly titled "POIzone", a bunch of Apache POI and Tika commiters, several of whom I met in person for the first time.

My talks

I did three talks, one on Containers: Not Just For the Cloud? (Slides, video), one on Apache POI and the challenges of working with a 16 year old Java codebase (slides) and a lightning talk on a recent side project (video - starts at 2:41).

All in all, a fun and educational week, but some jet lag to overcome before getting back to reality on Monday.