Code Camp Wrap-up & Public Apology

The second annual Cincinnati-Dayton Area Code Camp is over. I think it went pretty well. I’ve had several people say they really enjoyed the event. We had 134 attendees for the final count. 24 sessions. Whew. I’ve posted up the content that I have so far. You can get links to individual sessions from the sessions page on the CINNUG site.

We had some great giveaways, including a surprise giveaway of a Microsoft Zune by Quick Solutions and an Xbox 360 by Microsoft! We also had contributors on site (MAX, Dev Express, Quick Solutions and Robert Half) to talk to the attendees.

I need to make a public apology that during the wrap-up session and raffle I forgot to thank the speakers. These great people spent a lot of time and effort putting together presentations, demo code and materials for the code camp. If you haven’t done a presentation before a decent amount of work is involved in it. You spend quite a bit of time coming up with slides and content. Then you labor over getting a demo that has just enough of what you need to show, but something that isn’t overly complicated and can be easily explained. And sometimes, especially if you’re working with beta and bleeding edge stuff in your presentation, you’re spending hours trying to figure out some nuance of the code or technology that is keeping your demo from working. All so that you can stand up in front of a group of people and share your experience and knowledge. The speakers deserve a great deal of thanks for making the event what it was. After I was told I forgot to thank them I’ve felt worse and worse about it. I’ve since sent them individual thank yous, but I think that they deserve to hear everyone’s thanks that attended and enjoyed one of their sessions. If you came to the code camp and liked what you heard, post a comment and thank these great speakers for their time and effort. They definitely have my humble thanks.

Speakers: James Avery, Nino Benvenuti, Joe Brinkman, Dustin Campbell, Catherine Devlin, Jason Follas, Darrell Hawley, Jim Holmes, Philip Japikse, Mike Levy, Drew Robbins, Brian Sherwin, Bill Steele, Jim Weirich, and Joe Wirtley.

I’d also like thank the volunteers that came out to help. I’m sure I’m going to miss somewhere here on this list, but: Keith Callis, Scott Brooks, Kris Bultman, Dan Hounshell, James Avery, Justin Kohnen, Ben Von Handorf, Arnulfo Wing, Monisu Nagisetty, James Bender, and Alexei Govorine (if I misspelled your name it’s because I can’t read your handwriting. :) ). If I missed you please let me know and I’ll be sure to add your name here. I’m almost positive I’m missing someone from the volunteer staff that showed up that day to help.

Finally, I’d like to thank Jim Holmes who helped make my life a lot easier over the last few months. His notes from the first code camp really helped guide me along the way. He was also able to take care of several of the big ticket items in the planning and organizing that took a great load of my shoulders.

Again, I’d like to hear comments about the event. If you’re a member of the CINNUG site, please leave a comment over on the Code Camp forum.