For my slides and NAnt + Cruise Control config files click here. If you have any more questions please email me.
DDD6 was the 6th UK ‘code camp’ and I was luckily enough for my session to be voted in. Many people missed out attending because there were ~450 registrations in 24 hours!! Everyone I met was incredibly bright - most of the tough questions I asked in my Continuous Integration session were immediately answered, by sometimes what seemed half the room!
Comparison to with US Code Camps is pretty easy. The UK version is was excellent too. Classic cultural differences were there: a little less pizazz, and the average attendee weighing 20->30 lbs less. Note the cycle racks outside reception in the photos below, if US gas were $9/gallon I think we’d be slimmer too.
It pleases me greatly to report TDD/ Automated Testing is certainly gaining traction with the .Net community here. Many people told me Mike Hadlow did an excellent talk on using Inversion of Control (IoC) with TDD. Speaker of the day must go to Ben Hall who gave an overview of xUnit tools, including MBUnit which he contributes to. Apparently Ben is a fairly recent grad and this was his first presentation - watch this guy he will do well!
Ben, Mike, Richard Fennell and Michael Foord blogged this event. Barry Dorrans shares some photos. Update: even more was said about the day here, here, here, here, here, here and here!
Ben Hall - future tech superstar (no, not the back of his head, he is the guy speaking)
Microsoft UK at 7am in Winter- brrr!
Just before I left the speakers’ lounge to meet some smart people
This was in the halls, along with life size Halo characters!
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations, Tech Events at 2:54 PM MST
3 Comments »
Presenting involves elements of luck, I think we can rely less on luck…
After a series of extremely well received talks for the Atlanta .Net group I almost bombed last time. It was not a total disaster and luckily few were present to witness it. I had given the presentation very successfully twice before, so what happened?
The Excuses
Late notice: I stepped in late to fill the slot and did little preparation
Lack of Preparation: The only preparation was testing the demos and skim reading slides
Lack of enthusiasm: Lariam still affects me slightly, that was one of those weeks
Bad Luck
No crowd interaction: Advertising talks well in advance gets the word out and brings in people really interested in the subject - just one eager audience member can spur interest for others
Bored Blank faces: Need to learn how to handle this
Problems with my Old Style
Need short 10/15 minutes segments: The Cruise Control .Net talk was pretty technical, each section building on the last. If I lost an audience member they stayed lost. If one demo fails it could destroy every subsequent demo.
Relying on audience interaction: Good interaction makes for killer presentations - everyone learns and everyone has fun. I was relying on it, don’t!
Deja Vu: When giving the same presentation several times it feels insincere, especially when repeating jokes. This must be an experience thing, Comedy School could help too.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations at 5:46 PM MST
No Comments »
== UPDATE: Registration is full. It took just a few days!! ==
Registration is now live, these free conferences always fill up fast so register right now!
It is on a Saturday at Microsoft’s office in Reading and there are some great looking sessions - some good ones are bound to overlap with my slot :(
See you there… Developers, Developers, Developers!
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations at 1:29 PM MST
No Comments »
This should be fun a night, I will kick off with a light hearted look at Cruise Control - it is amazing how many projects still do not use Continuous Integration. My plan is take demos and a few slides - knowing the Architect Group the audience will soon be talking more than me ;)
Next I will give a more formal presentation on Software Estimation - it will be a little dry, but I expect people in the room will liven it up with amusing tales from the field. We all have tales to tell of estimates which went awry.
The Architects group is really meant for Architects and CTOs with 10+ years experience. Even are you not an Architect (yet!) come along this month and enjoy these basic topics. Be aware that most regulars will call out any BS from presenters, I fully expect to be challenged and hope to learn a lot from other attendees.
The Atlanta IASA website is http://www.iasahome.org/web/atlanta.
We meet at Matrix in Dunwoody:
May 9 - 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Matrix (on the top floor)
115 Perimeter Center Place NE
Suite 250
Atlanta, GA 30346
Click here for a Google Map
The office is secure so if you are late knock on the window to the left of the door and someone will let you in.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Atlanta, Presentations, Tech Events, Technology at 12:45 PM MST
3 Comments »
That was another enjoyable night. I must give a big thanks to all the hundred or so
people that showed up to hear me talk again. If anyone would like the slides please
click here.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Atlanta, Presentations at 5:13 PM MST
No Comments »
It is over three months since I last presented anywhere, so it is time
to do it again:
http://www.atlantadotnet.org/
This is brand new material with only one slide carried from my NUnit presentations.
The subject is testing, and on my first dry run it was utterly boring. Since
then I rewrote the slides, and am quite happy that most developers will enjoy
it.
The material is mostly high level covering:
- Extremes of development methodologies
- Different test practices, and when each one makes sense
- Automated Testing in Team System
It will not be as much fun as last
year’s code camp, but I think it is worth attending for any developer wishing
to become more methodical. This will be the primary presentation that I hawk at code
camps this year, so feedback after the event is very much appreciated.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Atlanta, Presentations at 2:55 PM MST
No Comments »
There are still spaces left for Alabama’s code camp which happens on Saturday 29th October. If you missed Atlanta’s then why not try this one - we know the price is right.
The Agenda is interesting; there are an unbelievable NINE tracks:
http://www.alabamacodecamp.com/AlAgenda.aspx
You can sign up here:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032280737&Culture=en-US
If you fancy a ride there in a swanky BMW then just email and I’ll let you know my travel plans. Ok it is only a stripper 325i but I love the car, although it will be traded for a ‘99 Miata soon so I’ll be able to afford to race what I drive - the BMW had two warranty issues that followed my driving school so it has not hit the track again. The dealership is always great but I don’t want to abuse the warranty, I have already had a full set of new rotors and pads + the rear diff fixed which I know were all due to
my driving. Now should I NOS the Miata…. Yes I am a law abiding 35 year old UMIST grad with a white collar job; sometimes no one would guess :)
While I am talking cars here are two pictures of my humble steed in two different situations. The second one is ultra-cool and will be explained in a future post. In a post after I explain how to obtain a Realtor license and just how much cash it will save you when moving house (I said that I would do that how long ago?):
DIY on the house this week - good job I have a (folding) trailer
Plugging into ODB-II, who needs the dealership?
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations at 5:50 PM MST
No Comments »
Boy am I late
blogging about this one. Well it was a great day with many great speakers, info on
who spoke about what is still up here: http://www.gcnug.org/Default.aspx?tabid=81
Everyone I met
was very friendly including these guys I had lunch with:
The food at
lunchtime was the best of any Code Camp so far, just look at the happy faces below
who hung around for seconds:
Finally I attended Doug’s Indigo presentation. He is below setting up and no
one owned up to taking this picture before he was ready:
It was great to meet several stars/ future stars at the Queen Anne Revenge. Some of
the people I enjoyed meeting are Frank
Lavigne (and wife), Lou
Vega
, Bill
Ryan
, Will
Morganweck
, Robin
Edwards
and the guy who made it all happen Chris
Williams
. I met loads more great people there and at the Code Camp so sorry to miss some
names, but my memory is terrible and I think everyone ran out of business cards by
10am - I know that I did!
So
how was it personally? Suzanne and I traveled to Charleston the evening before Code
Camp and
dined with the other speakers at the Queen Anne’s
Revenge. I spoke at 9am and we had to close the doors to the room nearly
ten minutes before starting due to having no more space! The presentation
went fantastically with pretty much zero nerves - see y’all, all it needs
is practice, if I can become a competent presenter then anyone can! Suzanne
and I left Charleston on Sunday morning arriving back in Atlanta in time for tea.
A perfect weekend :)
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations at 5:21 PM MST
No Comments »
Keith Rome and I just returned from an excellent day at Florida’s FREE Code Camp. This was WELL WORTH attending; several speakers were truly world class.
Props goes to Nova South Eastern University who provided a fine location (seen below).
The lecture theatres were clean and new, with spotless desks. Very unlike the University
I attended in the UK; which was probably last modernized in the 1800’s!
Nova University
Most people know by now that these Code Camps are organized by hard working Volunteers
in the local community, with help from their Microsoft DEs, DCCs etc. The amount of
work required to perpare for this 200+ attendee event is very much appreciated.
So, how did it go? Thanks to Delta and the Superbowl filling every flight to Florida
we arrived very late Friday evening missing the social- dang it. The silver lining
is this meant I spent nine hours with Keith Rome who educated me in many areas of
.Net I know little about. Keith is seriously smart. My background includes three CS
degrees, Keith’s degree was not CS related; he is one of the many self taught
programmers out there. Yet, in many, many areas he beats me hands down - amazing talent.
Listen up recruiters, a CS degree is _not_ mandatory!
After meeting a few fellow attendees at our nearby hotel (+ a newbie speaker on quite
the ego trip, LOL!) we trundled over to registration. Keith is seen below scrutinizing
the final session schedule.
Not being locals, many speakers were new to us but the keynote pointed us to some
stars. Apparently most sessions were packed often running out of standing room. You
can tell the session below was one of the less well attended because we still had
room on the floor! I don’t know who the guy at the front is, he seemed mega-bright
and I meant to say hi during the day - if anyone knows him LMK who it is. The quality
of attendees in general was impressive, they were not quite as friendly as us Georgians
but since Keith and I crashed their party that’s OK.
Packed room with random smart guy at the front>
Talking of stars, Corey OMara showed people how a professional presentation should
be done, introducing VS 2005. You can see him below wowing the crowd with his animated
presentation style.
Corey OMara getting 100% attention from the audience
Other attendees told me there were many more great speakers -
Doug Turnure and Kirk Evans got mentions, but the man of the day was Tim Walton and
‘Tales from the Server Side’. The first session was so packed his session was ran
again and packed to capacity again! World of mouth got out very quickly. His Geordie (from
Newcastle but sounds Scottish to most Americans) accent took even me a minute of to
adjust to, but the material… OMG was it interesting. On top of content to
die for he had us all rolling with laughter and the hour flew by. Tim talked primarily
about debugging apps using dump files - which I had tired to do recently but lacked
the time to read the 150 page pdf . His intro was very useful; I am already lobbying
for him to attend the Atlanta Code Camp. If necessary I will personally pay his air
fair from Tampa to Atlanta (seriously), please someone from Microsoft pull this off
- every developer in Atlanta needs to hear what Tim has to say.
Ok time to start wrapping this long post up. The photos below try to illustrate how
packed the closing keynote was. Plus, do you see how much swag was provided? There
must have been over a hundred prizes not including the t-shirts, mints, candy, DVDs
etc thrown into the audience. Pretty impressive swag, but I
heard a rumor Doug Turnure said it was nothing compared to what we’ll see at Atlanta’s
code camp. He mentioned something about needing a flat bed truck to haul
it all, right Doug?
Lots of people
Lots of people + my friend Greg (far right) mesmerized by swag
Did someone say swag? Note the huge boxes that were still unopened
We have been giving this stuff out 30 minutes and our hands are still full!
Ok everyone knows I call things as I see them, no sugar coating or (unjustified) bias
towards Microsoft here… It was a great day but just a few observations of how Atlanta can
be better:
One presenter I saw appeared hung over. He simply read from slides and was often right
clicking menus to find out what the product did. Note to presenters: Please prepare
and practice your material. Even if you are local superstar with a confident swagger
try to make an effort, please!
Not that we are discouraging amateur speakers from presenting (myself being a TOTAL
AMATEUR). Some speakers at Florida were obviously nervous and not very polished (aahhem..
not a bit like moi talking about NUnit to 80+ people last week, honest!). Being inexperienced
is fine, everyone can see they are making an effort and attendees still take knowledge
away from the talk. Drinking until 4am then speaking on something you have barely
researched is not at all impressive.
There was only one other low light. A handful of speakers were somewhat rude if us
regular ‘plebs’ tired to speak to them. All the best speakers were
very friendly and talked to the attendees. I guess that is what differentiates superstars
everyone likes (e.g. Mark Dunn) with the wannabes superstars who’s local following
make them feel like Tom Cruise.
OK, that was way too much negativity. It was an AWESOME event, thanks again to all
that helped organize it. Today I am submitting my own talks for Atlanta’s Code Camp
– hopefully one will be accepted, but given the quality of Florida it will not
be surprising if I do not make the grade.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Presentations at 5:22 PM MST
No Comments »
