Tag Archives: Mindview

Swag at the Java Posse Roundup

Cool swag

Is it rude to brag about the swag at a conference? Ah, well, I’m gonna do it anyhow. Next year, I’m convinced that the Java Posse Roundup 2008 will sell out during the early bird registration period, and it won’t be just for the swag.

But it was cool swag.

Cenqua and Google and O’Reilly sent t-shirts. There was a serious lack of shirts in small sizes. Kathy Sierra would NOT be pleased. She’s right … it DOES matter. Even the guys were amused at the number of XL and XXL. Not a small or medium in the bunch of Google or O’Reilly shirts. I didn’t check out the Cenqua shirts (I like their product, though).

O’Reilly sent some books and notepads. But they made the mistake of labeling the box “Dark Chocolate”. OK, the notebooks were great, but the expectation of chocolate kinda set the bar!

Google also sent some really cool flashy pins. Bruce’s company (Mindview) has great floaty pens.

Adobe sent a training video for Flex and a nice travel mug too.

Sun sent developer tools. I hope that I didn’t forget anyone. The swag table was quite laden with goodies. We have some cool notebooks that I could have taken, but the thought didn’t occur to me.

But next year, someone better send chocolate. I definitely know what SRT will take to its next event. Hmm, we’re sponsors of the Michigan Celebration of Women in Computing in a few weeks. Maybe I should see if we still have time to get chocolate!

Announcing CodeMash 2007

Ohio … where you need to be January 18-19

What? January in Ohio?! That’s always the first reaction. But … once I tell them what’s going on (and that it’s at an indoor water park), the tune changes to, “Really? Cool!”.

I’ve been involved with the planning of CodeMash, a 2-day conference for developers, to be held in Sandusky, Ohio January 18-19. 2007. It’s a conference for developers of all flavors: Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Perl … you name it! We’ll have some Ruby on Rails and some TurboGears, some Oracle and MySQL. The goal is to all get together and learn from one another. We all benefit from advances in other languages and platforms.

We’ve scheduled some really cool keynotes. Bruce Eckel is going to talk about issues of design in software development, from a philosophical standpoint. Neal Ford is planning a talk about the evolving programming paradigm. Scott Guthrie will also be doing a keynote.

We’re accepting abstracts right now, and conference registration will be open really soon (you can reserve a spot now, though!). The pricing is phenomenal … early bird price of $99 for the 2 day conference, if you stay at the Kalahari Resort (conference hotel, discounted room rate of $88/night). The regular price for registration (after Nov 30) is $149.

I think it’s going to be an amazing event.

CodeMash – I'll be there!

Code Mash Conference Page

Dianne heads off to a conference in Colorado

Programming the New Web: An Open Spaces Conference in Colorado

I’ve been in Crested Butte, CO, this week for a conference. Bruce Eckel is running it. The format is “Open Spaces”, which allows the conference attendees to customize the content, rather than the other way around. The first day, we submitted ideas for talks, and we found that we had a full schedule of 4 “talks” per day. In a larger group, we might have broken out into multiple sessions, but we’re a group of 10 and that’s pretty much perfect for consecutive sessions. I’m hesitating on using the term “talks” for such informal discussions. It’s really been a sharing/learning experience and it may well spoil me for a more traditional conference setting.

The attendees span our industry, both in terms of size of companies and in application areas. We have everything from pure website development to embedded systems, in both industry and academia. Company sizes range from the sole proprietor to a Fortune 100 company. It’s been a great experience in terms of seeing what other people are doing, and small enough that we can actually get into more detail than would typically be possible at a conference. I would definitely attend an Open Space conference again!

Crested Butte, too, is an experience. It’s visually stunning and outdoor opportunities abound. Cross country skiing is one of my favorite activities, and I’ve been really happy to be skiing here. There are a lot of other random things that I am really enjoying in this town … the friendly faces (and paper cups) at coffee shops, the yoga studio in town, the metal roofs on all of the houses, the gorgeous scenery.

Check back for technical content, or check out the links below!

Ben's weblog
Attendee at Conference
Barry's weblog
Attendee at Conference
Mike's weblog
Attendee at Conference
Bruce's weblog
Organizer's weblog