Wednesday, December 05, 2007

I swear I do code once in a while and my blog will reflect that again soon. But first, I want to follow up on my DevTeach presenter summary for the remaining presenters I saw during the conference.

Oren Eini - Rapid web development with MonoRail

Presentation Alias: The Mentor
Underlying motif: Experienced and practiced
Summary: Oren's presentation had a feel of "I've tried every possible combination and this technique is the best one". Although it was an introduction, he covered not only MonoRail but Windsor and ActiveRecord.

Steven Rockarts - Generics: They're not just about collections

Presentation Alias: The Energizer
Underlying motif: Laconic and unflappable
Summary: For a guy whose last name is barely an anagram away from Rock Star, I was expecting at least a mullet. You won't see the words "unrestrained energy" in his evals but he's got a good Steven Wright thing going that is interesting to watch. And the guy is not fazed by anything.

Justice Gray - Microsoft MVC Architecture...what side are YOU on?

Presentation Alias: The Sex Magnate
Underlying motif: Wanton and uninhibited .NET lust
Summary: I'll confess, I didn't make up the presentation alias. I took it directly from Justice's business card (you probably think I'm kidding). He mixes entertainment (depending on whether you're the topic at hand or not) with hard-core tech talk like no other and dove pretty deep into MVC in a way people won't soon forget, even if Donald really wants you to.

All in all, I'd love to see all the presenters again next DevTeach. Preferably at the bar after the session.

Kyle the Teetotalled

Monday, December 03, 2007

Yeah, so the daily updates can be added to my list of good ideas at the time. As it is, I'm posting this one only because I feel some strange sort of internal obligation to at least document the fact that I attended. God bless the internet for being the backup drive for my memory.

I'm really glad I attended this conference which is slightly different than saying it was a good conference to attend (which it was). I personally would have liked to see more intermediate to advanced presentations on the subjects I'm interested in but maybe I just attended the wrong sessions. All the presentations I sat in on were entertaining and I gathered some good nuggets of information, but from a pure content perspective, it's hard to justify the expense. Or having to deal with the refrigerator they call Vancouver. It &*%$ snowed here the day I left, I'm pretty sure out of spite.

But the real value of DevTeach (as with most conferences) is rarely the learning experience. Or rather, it's rarely the book learning 'cause quite frankly, I learned more than I would have preferred in some cases. Last night, I sat exactly in the middle 'twixt two tables at a bar with JP Boodhoo at the head of one discussing being a thought leader in the community and Scott Belware at the head of the other talking about how strippers can't scale. It was like those cartoons where there's a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, both vying for your attention.

Much of the time, I stayed in my comfort zone and hung out with the western Canada contingent (see Appendix). There was much merriment with this crew even if, by the end of the conference, I started responding to e-mails with messages like: "Don't you people have an OFF button?" Maybe I'm getting too old.

Despite my brains getting rattled with all the head shaking in disbelief, it was primarily this human interaction I was anticipating. Hallway conversations, lunch/dinner with old and new friends, chats in the hotel bar after the conference. These are things I don't get to do much and they are my lifeline to the industry. And they help me keep pace with the alt.net movement.

All in all, a good introduction to the DevTeach experience for me and one I look forward to next May in Toronto where the flight will be more convenient. And the weather *better* be warmer.

Kyle the Declimatized

Appendix: The Coding Hillbilly's Peeps for DevTeach. A list of people or persons that kept me entertained and/or warm throughout the conference. Interpretation of that statement is left as an exercise to the reader. As I said more than once at the conference: I don't need to impress you people.

• Donald Belcham
• Justice Gray
• D'Arcy Lussier
• Dave Woods
• Bil Simser
• Steven Rockarts
• Jennifer Pearcey
• Rob Windsor
• Shane Coutrille
• Kelly Cassidy
• Nolan Zack
• Gary from Saskatchewan

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Day 1, for completeness, I spent shopping with Dave Woods, which he really should hire himself out for as a service considering how often he does it. Also saw No Country For Old Men (review, such as it is, is over at my usual movie haunt; short version: it rocks) and attended Party With Palermo and we now have undisputed, non-Photoshopped proof that Justice Gray and I are two different people.

Summary sessions I will leave to others because as it is, this post will be lost in a sea of DevTeach: Day X blog posts. Instead, here are my reviews of the presenters' styles. No links to their blogs because they're pretty much all more well-known than I am.

Jeremy Miller: How does design get done on an Agile project?

Presentation alias: The Story Teller (no pun intended...ok, it was intended)
Underlying motif: Down-home folksy; free and easy going
Summary: Watching Jeremy present is kind of like talking with your older brother whose just come back from a trip to Europe and has some good stories to tell. Any advice he gives seems as if it has been passed down for generations.

Donald Belcham: Continuous Integration with CruiseControl & NAnt

Presentation alias: Pipes
Underlying motif: Understated; commands respect
Summary: Don, with his low, resounding voice, is the Barry White of presenting. Everything he says sounds like it will help you, personally, get laid. You could hear audible swooning from the audience whenever he said "continuous integration, baby".

David Laribee: User Stories, Iterations, and Releases

Presentation alias: The Hippie
Underlying motif: Approachable and affable;
Summary: Dave is the master of fonts and presents with a bit of an edge. He's got a quick wit that he pulls out sparingly but pointedly. And I'm pretty sure he was wearing tearaway pants.

James Kovacs: The Persistence Ignorant Domain Model

Presentation alias: The Ambassador
Underlying motif: Professorial; Wise and well-traveled
Summary: James' style is well-rounded and well-grounded. Ever the diplomat, he always manages to find good in everything. Such is the power of his pursuasion, for a fleeting moment, I considered using the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Richard Campbell & Kent Alstad: The Scaling Habits of ASP.NET Applications

Presentation alias: The Geeks (I mean that in a good way)
Underlying motif: Dynamic, good-natured rapport;
Summary: I stayed only about fifteen minutes into this (family emergency, not content-related) so I didn't get the full Camb-stad experience. But the two feed well off each other and give a solid presentation well balanced 'twixt friendly jibes and hard-core techspeak.

Kyle the Presented

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Airports aren't happy places. In fact, they are pretty angry in that they are filled with angry, angry people. People who have lost their luggage, missed their connection, just had a run-in with the humorless security agents who live for any event to break up the monotony after the novelty of "guess the passenger's ailments based on the contents of the carry-on" wears off. And when one travels alone and pays attention, it can provide an endless source of entertainment.

Airplanes themselves are a little less entertaining. The people are generally in a better mood and the conversations you "overhear" are downright banal. Especially when you are leaving someplace tropical and the younger tourists are talking at a volume just slightly louder than normal so they can be sure those immediately around them can hear them talking about how drunk/sunburned/"almost" killed they got on their vacation. I cringe when I think I used to be those people (and very likely, still am).

But those are just general observations that have nothing really to do with DevTeach except that they will set the stage for the next week on this blog-thingy. Like ALT.NET, I'll be focusing more on general impressions and stories than specifics of the technology because there are people more eloquent than I who can cover details. And frankly, tech-writing is boring to write and I don't have the attention span for it most of the time.

My specific flight from NAS to YYV was fairly uneventful. Sat next to someone who was relatively chatty in the YYZ-YYV leg which doesn't bother me too much. He was apparently on his way to Vancouver to see his daughter who was having a hard time because of a recent car accident involving a drunk driver and she'd been laid off because of it and he was supposed to drive but the trailer he was going to use (which was filled with all kinds of valuable belongings including a bunch of old jazz vinyls) had been stolen and he suspected his friend's son but he couldn't tell the police because then the kid would get popped by the drug dealers he likely sold the trailer to pay off.

Me: "Golly, that's a bummer....<awkward silence>....so...ummm, my name's Kyle....and....uhhhh....I'm just gonna go back and do my crossword puzzle, mmkay?"

The Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre has made an excellent first impression being nested near both an adult store advertising 25 cent peep shows and a church that celebrates the birth of Jesus old-school: with a dazzling Christmas light display. The room will make an excellent home for the next week despite the fact that it, like all hotels in North America, comes with a coffee maker but no kettle. The only oddity is that the room seems to lack cold water. The temperature ranges from blisteringly hot from the hot tap and slightly warmer than lukewarm from the cold tap.

Internet access, I've been assured, is free, despite the ominous log-in page to the right (click for larger view) which also has another feature that's new to me in that it is very adamant that I ignore the last four fields (each helpfully labelled "Ignore this field"). So I had to wait about forty-five minutes before I could log in because my mind kept wandering back to those fields and I didn't want to break the rules this early into my stay. If they wanted me to ignore them, they shouldn't have called attention to them, instead labelling them something like "Enter your name here to receive spam from our hotel for the next four generations of your family."

'Tis all for now, hillbillies. Time to wander the streets.

Kyle the Nomadic