Sydney Meetup; MacMania Begins

The MacTalk meetup in Sydney was great. Harts Pub in The Rocks was packed with local and not-so-local Mac geeks eager to meet Leo Laporte, Don McAllister and Allison Sheridan. Leo, in particular, was swarmed with fans.

I met several interesting folks. Here’s Chloe Tse, a 3D artist and huge TWiT fan. If there was a prize for best t-shirt, Chloe would have won.

Allister Jenks wins the prize for traveling the greatest distance just to hang out with us. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand. A loyal NosillaCastaway, he was happy to meet Allison Sheridan.

Here’s a photo of Leo. On his left is Steven Sommer, just one of the many local Sydney Mac geeks we enjoyed talking to.

But MacMania is not all fun and games! We had our first day of sessions. Don McAllister kicked off the conference with a thorough survey of reading in the age of digital books. A veritable show-and-tell, Don brought along multiple Kindles and other e-readers to discuss their pros and cons. Of course Don has the new iPad mini, and those of us not lucky enough to get one before the cruise had a chance to see Don’s.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Melbourne. I hear we’ll have a meetup with local Mac geeks there. I know we have a meetup with some koalas at the Koala Sanctuary.