It was a nice event. It went by really fast – I must have been enjoying it too much (See the event photos). I got to meet lots of people over there.

When I arrived at the restaurant, where the event was held, we were just hanging outside by the harbor. We’re all talking. And out of the blue, somebody screamed out Jon, referring to Opera’s CEO, is here.

Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s founder and CEO, made his grand entrance by arriving on a small boat (check out the photos from the entire event), which carried an Opera flag as well as American and Norwegian flags. Upon getting off the boat, he spoke for a few minutes. He joked about his failed attempt to swim across the ocean last year when Opera 8 was released.

After all the speakers were done, I had a chance to walk around and meet people.

But before I had a chance to get up (I was still blogging and posting photos), Chris Pirillo walked up to me and introduced himself. For those of you who don’t know Chris, he’s the founder of Lockergnome and is a former host on TechTV, he now has his own (popular) radio show. Chris posted the video of Jon’s grand entrance on his site.

Matt May, the director of technology for Blue Flavor and former W3C member, also came over to say hello. He told me he enjoys reading Opera Watch. Earlier in the event, Matt was one of the speakers, who spoke about the importance of web standards.

Matt started using Opera only recently (moved from Firefox), he told me Opera’s mail client is what got him to switch. Incidentally, the person who told him about Opera is the same person who told me about Opera many years ago. It was my former college roommate, Yakov Shafranovich, while heading the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) was in touch with Matt, who worked for the W3C at the time. What a small world.

I also had a chance to sit down with Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, and with Ashwin Navin, the president and co-founder of BitTorrent.com. Both of them had given a presentation on BitTorrent earlier in the day. Last year, Opera signed an agreement with BitTorrent to include it in the browser. Ashwin told me that the agreement is an important step for their company. He suggested to me that I add a BitTorrent search field on Opera Watch.

There were a few local reporters and photographers who covered the event. Todd Bishop, from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, interviewed me for a story he’s doing for tomorrow’s paper.

An AP photographer also took a picture of me blogging from the event, who then asked me a bit about myself. We’ll see if my picture makes it to the AP wire.

Before I headed out to the event, I managed to sneak in an interview with Red Herring.

Also attending the event was Scott Laster from Microsoft. Scott is Opera’s contact at Microsoft – he works on getting Microsoft’s products to work in harmony with the Opera browser. I had a chance to chat with him a bit before the event.

A couple Google representatives were also present. Katherine Chou, from Google, explained to me that her job at Google involves making sure Google’s products and services work in Opera.

Some Opera users were also in attendance. Drew Olanoff, from TheBestDamnTechShow, flew in to Seattle for the event. Drew and the other guys on his radio show recently got hooked on to the Opera browser. Take a look at Drew’s pictures and video from the event on his Opera Community page. One of the videos he took is an interview with me.

I had a chance to play around a bit with the new (and unreleased) Nintendo DS with the Opera browser. Ed Palumbo, an Opera user who flew in to the event, showed me a bit of the functionality of the Opera browser on the Nintendo DS. (See the event photos for pictures of the Nintendo DS).

As I said before, the event went by way too quickly for me. When Michelle Valdivia, Opera’s Communications Manager, came to tell me that my ride back to the hotel was waiting, it dawned on me at how fast it was over.

After the event I stopped by the hotel room of one of the Opera guys, where everyone (including the CEO) was on Opera Watch looking at the event’s photos.

I then sat down with Opera’s CEO for close to forty five minutes at the café downstairs. We covered a lot of ground in our interview. It was an enjoyable talk with him, he’s a straight shooter. I should, hopefully, have the interview up by Thursday.

Lots of credit goes out to Ben Jacobson for arranging this event; it was his idea. I had a chance to sit down and talk with Ben a bit, he’s very friendly. I hope to meet him again sometime.

Also deserving credit is Michelle Valdivia, in addition on arranging the event, she worked out all my travel and hotel arrangements.

This is the first time that I got to meet the Opera people. I’ve been writing on Opera Watch for nearly two years, and have been talking to them via email and chat, but never got to meet them.

I have to visit Norway, and meet the rest of the Opera folks.

I had a nice time with the Opera executives during dinner the night before the event as well. Funnily, when I walked into the restaurant where the Opera people were eating, one of the people asked me how I’d heard about their dinner, to which someone sprung up and said “he heard an Opera rumor”.

I leave Seattle with the sense that those Opera folks are really devoted to what they do. They’re seriously working hard on increasing the desktop market share.

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