The CAA conference in Perth was a fantastic time of catching up with old friends and finding out what’s new and what’s hot in the realms of archaeological computer-ing! 😉

There was a great selection of keynote speakers and good info in a lot of the sessions. As usual the hallway track was where most of the fundamental work was done, although several discussion sessions (including the ones on FAIMS and GIS/consulting, which were incredibly useful) also provided a good overview of where things are going and what we all think about it.

Catching up with Ian Johnson was awesome, his Heurist project has come a long way and was released under an Open Source license just before the conference. I had already started installing it the moment it was released, but during the conference I worked on it some more as obviously having Ian there was a great asset. Together we were able to identify and work through most issues that enabled me to create a working system.

While it might stress out some people to not yet have a slick packaged product that “just works”, I regard it as perfectly normal for a project that has been internal to require some extra work and feedback when it meets the big wide world. Typically this is something (other) companies provide and that’s one of the key things we’re looking at (providing hosted Heurist for clients). It’s not the first open source project I’ve been involved in. I’ve made several code contributions since, which Ian and his team have incorporated. Their responsiveness is a great sign that they understand the Open Source development model and its benefits.

It was really great to see the strides that are taking place with Heurist and FAIMS and their interactions with each other. The use of mobile devices for recording in the field is definitely the new hot idea and it was particularly useful to hear people talk from experience about what works and what doesn’t. More on that later. Of course, as always, the database behind it is absolutely critical and that’s where Heurist comes into its own and leaves everything else way behind. More on that soon too.

Favourite quote from the conference: Eric Kansa‘s keynote, “many archaeologists are using sophisticated data models using the wrong tools, such as Excel.” Over 10 years ago I declared “Arjen’s rule#1: A relational database is not a spreadsheet” which still gets quoted today. It’s as relevant as it was then. More on that too, soon.