I've registered here at the PalmSource 2005 Developer Conference, and my first impressions are good.  They are still getting a lot of the conference space setup, but attendence is high, and the talk schedule looks good.  Of course, the most important first impression for a conference is what kind of free stuff you get as an attendee.  The 2004 PalmSource conference bag was pretty sparse, but this year the contents are looking a lot better.

First, there's the bag itself.  It's a black backpack with the "Palm Powered" and "PalmSource" logos on it, but no mention of the event.  I guess that lets PalmSource reuse any leftovers.  It has a rubberized bottom, two deep side pockets suitable for holding water bottles or laptop power adapters, a primary holding area with a laptop pouch, space for papers in the main flap, and  a front pocket with a snap-off organizer.  All of the zippers have zip pulls, and the back straps look to be well constructed with lots of stitching..  I think it will be a useful addition to my collection of show bags, and I'll probably switch to it as my day-to-day laptop bag.

In the backpack was a variety of papers, gadgets, and software included:

The first full day of the conference brought a lot of news and some good sessions.  The big deal was the announcement of palmOne's new license agreement for Palm OS, and their purchase of the name "Palm" from PalmSource.  I don't have any details outside of the press release; it looks like palmOne will be changing its name back to Palm in the near future, and that PalmSource has a few years to rebrand itself and its OS.

Outside that note, this morning's keynote address wasn't very surprising.  I caught a bit of the palmOne talk with new Senior VP Mark Bercow which mainly was about our product line strategy and how we rely on developers to produce interesting software.  While working the palmOne booth on the exhibit floor, the most common questions were "can I play with a LifeDrive?" and "what's the difference between the different Treo 650s you're selling in the store?".

This evening was fun; I was one of the on-stage experts for the "Stump the Experts" panel.  We didn't have a huge number of questions from the audience, but it was enough to fill the hour, and I got to pitch in on some NVFS and Sony questions.  After that, I hung out at the hardware labs and mostly answered CodeWarrior questions.  I also helped one of the PalmSource engineers get their PalmRC compiler plugin for CodeWarrior working better; this is one of the tools available as part of the PalmSource Inside Track program, and it's pretty nice for people who want to use the XRD format with the CW V9 tools.