San Francisco, California, USA

In late February this year I have spend a couple of weeks in San Francisco. I work remotely for the Wikimedia Foundation so I have been visiting the mother ship (photo). A lot of stuff happened while I was there.

Tech

I have atended a lot of meetings, paired with people, attended meetups... For example, I was in the office while they were recording VisualEditor video (photo).

The first meetup I attended was Discussion about English Wikipedia Dispute Resolution with Steven Zhang (photo).

Another one was Wikimedia & wikiHow mobile updates (photos). Chris McMahon and I had one minute talk about browser automation. We start at 46:44.

Chris and I had a bit longer talk about browser automation at a Wikimedia Open Tech Chat (photos). We talk for the first 14 minutes.

I was at Tales From the Selenium Testing Trenches meetup organised by San Francisco Selenium Meetup Group at Lookout Mobile Security office. At the meetup I have met R. Tyler Croy, organiser of Testing and Automation devroom at FOSDEM 2013. He works at Lookout Mobile Security, so he gave me a short tour around the office before the meetup.

After the meetup I had a beer or two with a few people, including Chris and Michael Larsen. Michael wrote "...and Those Automated Browser Tests Totally Saved My Ass!" blog post the next day.

Chris and I had dinner first with Elisabeth Hendrickson and then with Marlena Compton, both of Pivotal Labs. Marlena invited us to breakfast at Pivotal Labs, so we visited their San Francisco office.

Beer

I was sampling beer (21st Amendment Brewery, ThirstyBear Brewing Company, Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery, Toronado Pub, to mention a few). I was able to get a short tour of 21st Amendment Brewery (photos). I also visited San Francisco Brewcraft brewshop (photo).

Sightseeing

I also did some sightseeing. One day I walked to Fishermans Wharf (photo). I tried getting to Alcatraz but it was sold out. This photo shows the closest I was to it. I stumbled at California sea lions at PIER 39 (photo), Musee Mecanique (photo) and Chinese New Year Parade. The Old Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception (photo) was was near my hotel, so I have visited it. Can you tell from the photo that it is in Chinatown? One day I have rented a bike and had a nice ride to the Golden Gate Bridge (photo) and back.