CodeMash 2008 Wrap Up

Big Sigh of Relief!

I just got home with my family. We have finally unpacked, and caught our breath. The past nine months have been a lot of work. And not just for me, but for the whole CodeMash planning team.

Just some of the volunteers that put this year together: Jim Holmes, Jason Gilmore, Jason Follas, Jeff Blankenburg, Josh Holmes, Dianne Marsh, John Hopkins, Brian Sherwin, and Chris Woodruff. There are plenty of others that helped out, and I want to thank you folks as well.

How do I even begin to capture the energy that was at CodeMash this year?

The keynoters were FANTASTIC. Each brought a different something to the conference. Neal Ford did a great job setting the tone of the conference. Scott Hanselman really livened things up after lunch, and showed that cross platform is in the real world with his demo of PHP on IIS (with huge performance improvements). Then Brian Goetz showed that there were still some great challenges left for us to solve.

Our speakers were fantastic across the board, with Jim Weirich giving an extra special session on his '10 things to know about Ruby' on Friday.

There was a ton of buzz and energy around the Quick Solutions booth, because everyone was playing Rock Band. This turned out to be Scott Hanselman's favorite hang out. We gave away the game to an attendee, and also gave away $150 and $75 to the top two bands. John Chapman was in both!

We had over 375 people there, way up over the 250 we had in 2007.

The Thursday night cocktail party held by Quick Solutions was a big hit. Although we had to move Rock Band closer to the party so that people would actually be AT the party. A bunch of real musicians brought in their instruments and setup a jam session in an adjoining room.

Instead of shaving my head this year, I dyed it blue. A lot of people kept coming up and asking me why I dyed my hair. Had I lost a bet? they wondered. I did it so that people would come up to me. I got to meet a lot more people that way. It was a great ice breaker. I also did it so it was easier to recognize me in the crowds. It's easy to find 'the guy with blue hair' than 'Brian Prince' in a crowd.

It was nice to see the Open Spaces program take off this year. I didn't get to attend any, but I heard a lot about the sessions that did happen. None of them took place in the pool this year though.

We can't forget the debut of the CodeMash Families and KidzMash programs. On a shoestring budget, Melissa and Matt Insko put together a program for the spouses and children of the attendees. They each received CodeMash badges, and had a special activities schedule. I think it really helped the families feel at home at the resort. Arnulfo Wing did a session on KPL for the kids. There was also a session with Lego Mindstorms as well.

The Kalahari was phenomenal as usual. Their staff is just top notch, and was always on top of anything that we needed at the last minute.

I did two sessions, Applied SOA, and Hands on Agile Practices. I think both went well. I especially had a lot of fun doing the agile talk, which I always do, it's always my favorite talk to give.

The content (podcasts and slides) from all of the sessions should be up on our site (www.codemash.org) within a few weeks.

Here are some pictures I found:

  1. CodeMash Video
  2. Flickr Pool
  3. Arnulfo Wing's pictures

And finally, I want to thank all of our sponsors. Without them, CodeMash wouldn't happen at all. We got a lot of great feedback from them this year, so I hope to see them next year.

The board now has a lot of work to do in learning what we can to make it better, and how to integrate the feedback.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farewell

I don't often explicitly state that I work for Quick Solutions when I post to my blog. Others that work with me talk about QSI all the time. I do this because I want the articles to be what 'I' have to say about technology, not what QSI has to say. I started working for QSI in June of 2003. I was about to start my own consulting company, and they asked me to come in to help them start their solutions business (having built a high quality technical staffing business). I thought, why not? Getting to build what I want to build on someone else's dime definitely reduces my personal risk, and if it didn't work out, I could just pick back up the 'start my own company' thing. Nearly five years have passed, and we have built a great team. A team that is considered one of the leading development shops in our region. Each, and EVERY person on this team would be considered a rock star at any company. We have a great culture for the team, and a deep seated ownership...
Read more

How does an Architect pack?

Today we are packing for the big move. Quick Solutions is moving to some new swanky office space, with an awesome new delivery center. The new center has wall to wall whiteboards, network projectors for group programming (pair programming is so 20th century), a game room, new open seating (shared workspace is the key to productivity), and lots of other new goodies. It is an amazing investment by the company, and shows their commitment to building the best team on the block. As we are packing, we started joking around (not that joking around is rare, and would have occurred regardless of the packing state). How does and architect pack? An architect doesn't pack anymore. He did that ten years ago. He goes to plenty of packing conferences, and has read a lot of books on packing. An architect will map out how the whole enterprise should pack, and even dictate what (clearly out of date) packing supplies and processes should be used. These processes will be the perfect match for some ...
Read more

Job security is a myth, and how IT Pros are Thriving

No matter how you slice it, the economy is definitely in a state of concern. Some call it a recession, some a depression, others it is a crash. Since all of those words are overloaded, I will choose to use the word Grapefruit to represent the current situation. How concerned you are with grapefruit depends on who you are, and your personal situation. It is these times of grapefruit when there is the most opportunity. Crazy, I know. But now is the time to start that crazy idea, to outmaneuver an opponent, or get desperate enough to take risks you normally wouldn’t take (personally, or as a company) during up times. All boats float in the high tide. Only great captains can navigate the low tide. There is no such thing as job security. Surprise. There just isn’t, it is a complete myth. ‘Job Security’ might have made sense two generations ago, but it just doesn’t work now. You make your own security, during good times, and during grapefruits. Through keeping your skills sharp, thro...
Read more