No, I didn’t attend this one!
My friend Jonas Stawski is the organizer and we’ve been pleased to be a minor sponsor the event the last couple years. It’s good karma, and a chance to see how thing work in a different market/culture. For example, one thing you might not expect is that trying to send “Free” stuff to the event isn’t easy, customs wants to charge fees based on it’s real value, not the free declaration. Here’s the final scoop from Jonas:
The final attendee count was 777 with 1800 registered.
Here are some pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/ComunidadesMicrosoft?v=photos&ref=nf#/album.php?aid=125918&id=112576331670
Videos uploaded by attendees:
Lately I’ve been thinking that I need to try harder to focus on doing the things I both want to do and have to do, achieve a better balance than I have this year. One of my favorite things to do is speak/attend community events. It’s good practice for my speaking skills, a chance to network, a time to see old friends, and to some degree good business as it’s a low key way to market my services.
The challenge is that they are on weekends and by the time I leave early to be there for the Friday night speaker party and try to stay for the Saturday night after party (both prime networking times), the weekend is gone – meaning I work two weeks straight. I’ve already learned the hard way not to book two weekends in a row, that starts to feel like real work. Losing a weekend doesn’t seem like a big deal, but imagine giving up 12-15 a year. That puts a dent in relaxing time, family time, chores around the house.
For 2010 I’m trying to plan ahead and decide which events I want to attend with the goal of only doing one a month, and maybe nothing in December. The hard part is that there are a lot of good events, and more coming. Do I hit the established ones that I know will be good? Go to the new events to show support? Try to hit cities I haven’t been to so it feels more like a vacation? I’m also biased towards events that bring in friends from out of Florida, good to see them more than once a year at PASS. What about local events like the Orlando Code Camp? Or the Jacksonville Code Camp – good event and good SQL crowd?
One of the trends I’ve seen is for some speakers to show up, do their presentation, and leave. Probably not fair to complain about that, after all they are donating their time to present, travel, prepare, but it seems like just checking the box rather than really participating. As an event leader I’d rather have speakers that will be there all day, but if I’m struggling for speakers….well, then it doesn’t seem so bad! Maybe I’ll do that for the local Code Camps, better to do some than one?
So, a very very tentative first cut at my schedule:
I’m probably missing something already. Thinking of an event for 2010? Probably not a bad idea to announce soon. I think there will be a few people in the same boat, having to make decisions about where to spend time and money, good to be first in line.
Just received a note from Dave Noderer that the 2010 South Fla Code Camp will be February 13th in Mirarmar, FL. It’s a long drive for me, just over 3 hours, but worth the trip due to the size (typically 500+ attendees) and the sheer variety of sessions. I’ll post more details when the event site goes live, but if you’re in or near Fla and starting to think about 2010 travel, this is worth considering.
The next Tampa Code Camp will be Nov 7th, 2009 at the KForce Building in Tampa. For the first time in years I’m going to have to miss it, I’ll just be returning from the PASS Summit and I’ll be ready for a break and family time by then! Good event if you’re in the area, Tampa has a strong technical community and it’s worth spending a Saturday there.
I drove up to Jacksonville Friday afternoon for the 2009 Jacksonville Code Camp led by my friend Bayer White. I left early enough to beat the Fri afternoon traffic and to give me some quality book store time before the 7:30 pm speaker party. Attendance at the party was good, I’d guess the majority of the speakers were there and it was well organized – wrist bands to identify members of the group and name badges (much appreciated!). Saw a lot of old friends, but ended up leaving early because not only was it a smoking bar, it was a real smoking bar and if you’re a non-smoker, you’ll appreciate how painful that can be. Notes for Bayer for next time:
That left unexpected free time, so I went looking for a late dinner, wound up at Ted’s Montana Grill having a bison burger and doing some reading, nice relaxing dinner.
Sat morning I came over about 8 am and noticed the lack of signage to the event. I knew where I was going, but it was easy to spot those looking for Code Camp by their driving. They did have a person waving a sign at the garage which was a nice touch. Then the lack of signage hit again, everyone looking around to try to figure out which of the many nearby buildings was the right one and ultimately people trying to follow people that looked like there were there for the event too.
Registration seemed to go very smoothly, nice full color event guide and a choice of a t-shirt or small bag. Plenty of coffee and donuts, decent number of sponsors set up though most of them seemed to be local. Especially at Code Camp I was hoping to see more of the tool vendors, I don’t follow the .Net tools as much and would have found it useful to watch some demos in person. One of things I noticed in the event guide was the branding – all the tracks had a sponsor name associated with it. Not a bad idea, just not sure it’s a good idea either!
I sat and watched the traffic flow for close to an hour, watching the sponsors and attendees interact. It’s the same pattern I see at all events and it works ok, but I keep thinking that we need a better (or additional) pattern – something that benefits both sponsors and attendees. Having the table and the giveaway or raffle works for some basic brand building and contact generation, but it doesn’t encourage the transfer of a lot of information and I think it could. More on this later, but as far as this event I thought the sponsors were treated well and getting good traffic by their tables.
Bayer started the day with a keynote and I was reminded my love/hate of key notes. It’s great to get everyone together and set the tone, but it takes a long time to get everyone seated – probably 200 in this case. Went pretty well, though I was on the fringes of the crowd and could barely hear Bayer speaking (no microphone).
First session of the day was about where clauses by Scott Gleason and I was astounded to see 60 people attend. It’s not that I don’t know there is a definite gap between developer and DBA, but this helped to clarify for me the depth of that gap. More importantly, it reinforces for me that too often the SQL presentations at Code Camps are really DBA centric and need to be developer centric. We tried this some earlier this year for the Orlando Code Camp and struggled, had a hard time getting a good set of sessions that weren’t DBA/admin focused. Fun to watch Scott present, this is I think his second or third time out and he’s great at connecting with the audience.
Took a break to assess logistics, was just noting that they had a coffee maker set up but no big carafe and had the interesting moment of watching an attendee grab the pot while the coffee continued to run. Accidents happen!
Next session was Why Do You Use a Staffing Company by Megan Hopkins from Kforce. I know Megan from her involvement with oPASS and SQLSaturday and I’m always interested in the hiring process. It was interesting to hear the comments from attendees about the value – resume comments, meeting them at the interview site for moral support, the general idea of having a support system during a trying period. That makes sense, but I was hoping to hear some deeper values. One of the values Megan cited was that they often bypass HR during the interview process where the key point is making sure you’re being assessed by someone with the technical skills to do it well, rather than a HR person who is looking for exact matches based on keywords and dates. She also said that HR tends to push for lowest salary to save the company money, where staffing people are trying to drive the salary higher because they are paid commission. One comment Megan made was that candidates should always expect a briefing about the potential employer prior to the interview. Obvious maybe, but still important. Part of that is “culture matching”, making sure the entire job is a good fit from the start. I thought a great point was that if you are working through a staffing firm you should get paid every 2 weeks, not when they get paid.
After lunch I went to an search engine optimization presentation by Jared Nielsen. He said Yahoo is better than Google for branding (showing your message), but not for direct conversion to money. He mentioned that Google includes page load time as part of it’s scoring. Most sites ignore what is passed through when pages are viewed a search engine. Home page should be the least visited, it’s goal is to segment traffic. Cache as much as possible as often as possible.
My presentation was the last of the day and it was nice to have 60-70 people present to talk about basic query plans and caching, show developers some of the magic behind the scenes. Took a lot of questions and had a nice time, no problems but fewer demos than planned due to the number of questions. Checked in with Bayer White before leaving and the final count was 460. That’s an impressive number! I heard a few people comment that it was noticeably better than in past years and I agree, the combination of a good location, good logistics, and good leadership all made a difference. Kudos to Bayer for a first class effort!
I left shortly after that to head home, wanting to get home in time for dinner with family. Didn’t turn out to be that simple though. About 50 miles from home started to get a serious vibration in the serious wheel, out of no where. Pulled over to check, didn’t see anything wrong and nothing flat, so start out again holding the speed to about 50 where the vibration seemed tolerable but not good. Pulled over again and this time I saw the problem right away, the left front tire was deformed, there was a visible hump/offset/dent in the tire itself! Hard to imagine the forces at play to cause that kind of damage but yet not produce a noticeable impact when it happened. Drive on or change the tire? Decided on safer to change and amazingly had it done in 10 minutes. Not that it should take longer, but usually something doesn’t want to work right. Back on the road, vibration gone, all is good.
But…no more than 5 miles from home on I4 traffic hits a complete stop. Not crawling, stopped. I was directly in front of a rest area about 3/4 of a mile from the closest exit, watched people coming up behind divert into the rest area to try to bypass the slowness, though clearly they could see traffic stopped over there too. Turned off the truck and just watched, thinking on things traffic after reading the recent book about it. Watched people treat the emergency lane as a forth lane so that the Highway Patrol had to drive on the grass to get by. Watched people pull into the rest area, see that it as stopped, and then drive aggressively back across the grass to get into the emergency lane. Some cutting across the center median to go back the other way until the police stopped (or slowed it down) anyway. Only pattern I spotted was that big four wheel drive trucks in particular seemed to dislike waiting in line, but I even saw a Jaguar (car, not cat) bouncing across the median. Once everyone realized they were truly stuck they seemed to calm down, people out chatting and talking on cell phones. One big thing I noticed was that there was no information provided – nothing on the radio, nothing on the DOT web site, etc. Transparency here would help, not only would people be able to call and adjust plans and schedules, but cars further up the road could divert cleanly instead of stacking up. In total was parked there a solid 45 minutes and then finally about to make the last couple of miles home for a late – and solo – dinner!
John Dunagan is the “Chief Organizer” of this event on October 3rd in Estero, FL, just south of Ft Myers. I’m still working my calendar, hoping to go down as an attendee as John puts on a pretty good show. If you’re a SQL person close by consider submitting a session or two – doesn’t hurt to try!
I wasn’t able to attend this event, but did participate as a sponsor and I had this follow up message from MVP Arnie Rowland:
To All Portland Code Camp 2009 Sponsors: Our sincere appreciation for your trust, your support, and your generosity! We had initially planned and communicated to you that our goal for the event was to host 300 attendees –and we substantially exceeded that goal. We had asked you to trust that we could create a well attended and well received event. We believe that we delivered. The early returns coming in, are that the event was quite well received, and 412 folks attended at least part of the day. Your Sponsorship was noted in the participant materials handed out to all attendees, and on the website, which was seen by, at the minimum, the 655 folks that registered. Your Sponsorship and support has been well noted, and Portland Code Camp 2009 will go down as one of the the largest volunteer events to date in the Portland tech community. It would not have happened without your generous support! If you provided products and services for the door prize drawings, a list of prizes and winners is located here. We sincerely thank you for your support to Portland Code Camp 2009, and to the greater Portland tech community. We hope that the venture has been, and will continue to be, equally successful for you. Regards, The Portland Code Camp 2009 Planning committee.
To All Portland Code Camp 2009 Sponsors:
Our sincere appreciation for your trust, your support, and your generosity!
We had initially planned and communicated to you that our goal for the event was to host 300 attendees –and we substantially exceeded that goal. We had asked you to trust that we could create a well attended and well received event. We believe that we delivered.
The early returns coming in, are that the event was quite well received, and 412 folks attended at least part of the day. Your Sponsorship was noted in the participant materials handed out to all attendees, and on the website, which was seen by, at the minimum, the 655 folks that registered. Your Sponsorship and support has been well noted, and Portland Code Camp 2009 will go down as one of the the largest volunteer events to date in the Portland tech community. It would not have happened without your generous support!
If you provided products and services for the door prize drawings, a list of prizes and winners is located here.
We sincerely thank you for your support to Portland Code Camp 2009, and to the greater Portland tech community. We hope that the venture has been, and will continue to be, equally successful for you.
Regards,
The Portland Code Camp 2009 Planning committee.
412 attendees is impressive! I’ve only been to a couple free events that have been bigger. On the .Net side I consider anything over 400 an indicator of two things; a great local community that has learned the value of these events, and a management team that works hard to get the word out. Takes both for it to happen.
My friend Bayer White is the event lead for the fifth annual Jacksonville Code Camp being held on August 29th at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Last year attendance was down some due to a major storm that forced a last minute location change, but I expect this year attendance will be 300+, all yearning to talk about things .net and hopefully some SQL Server stuff too. One new twist this year is that any "profit" left after expenses will go to Wolfson Children's Hospital.
Call for speakers and registration is now open.
This was an interesting year to watch the local Code Camp. Shawn Weisfeld organized it the previous two years, but following his move to Dallas Jessica Sterner become the power behind the Code Camp this year and as much as she was involved in the prior two years, leadership transitions are hard. Think about how it goes at work when you have plenty of other people to provide continuity and you're involved in every day - then think about how it affects a once a year volunteer effort. I'm pleased to report that all went smoothly...or at least seemed to!
If you visit the Code Camp Site you'll see both a brand new look and code behind the look, all done by Fabio Honigmann. It's nice enough that I've asked him to do a 'makeover' of the SQLSaturday site which is functional but decidedly not flashy.
The Friday night prior to the event the standard speaker get together was held, and it worked out nicely. Outdoor seating, about 30 speakers attending, great weather, and quiet enough to have a normal conversation. They had wrist bands for the attendees so the restaurant staff knew who was part of the party, but forgot the name badges - something to remember for all events, it definitely makes networking go a little more smoothly. It was a nice way to relax at the end of a long week.
The event was held March 28, 2009, at the main campus of Seminole Community College. For those in the Orlando area it's the same site they used two years ago and the one we used for SQLSaturday #8 last year. The room layout was a little different, they were planning on 350-400 attendees and they needed 11 rooms plus sponsor space. It ended up being just a little confusing, because the buildings have letters (Building J) and the schedule used letters for the rooms (Room G), and...they had last minute room changes. They did a good job of announcing the changes and trying to explain things, and they had a few people directing traffic too.
They had some signs up for parking, but no greeters (just like Wal-Mart, I think they get everyone off to a nice start) . Check in went smoothly, and the wait time couldn't have been more than a couple minutes at any time. They also had one person devoted to walk ins. Only a few sponsors set up, and I saw a few more coming in after 8 am, but they were getting good traffic thanks to the raffle tickets. They had a light breakfast set up; fresh fruit, croissants, coffee, and the prize table so everyone could see the books they had a chance to win. David Caylor handled most of the logistics and it seemed to go smoothly - no line for coffee, plenty of water, soda, and ice.
We had one SQL track (I was the nominal track chair, which just involved picking the sessions for the track) and I attended as a spectator this time, starting the day off with a session by my friend Wes Dumey on data warehousing. Other sessions where done by Ryan Duclos, Michael Antonovich, Kendal Van Dyke, and Shervin Shakibi.
What could go better next time? I think a 9 am start would give the sponsors a little more time to set up, and I'd like to see more sponsors - easier to come by in the .Net space than SQL Server (or at least it seems to me). Speaker check in was way back behind the main check in tables, that felt confusing. I definitely think they caused some confusion with using letters for rooms instead of the true room number. I think the final attendance was around 400, nicely done, though I keep thinking that if I can get 275 people to come to a SQLSaturday in Orlando, surely there must be a lot more developers in Orlando...say 10x as many? Jessica, Fabio, David, shouldn't you be trying for 1000 attendees? (Note: we've talked about growing both events, and the challenge is finding bigger space that is within the budget).
Things went very well, congratulations to the Orlando Code Camp team for doing a very nice job!
I attended the Tampa Code Camp this past weekend. It was located at the Kforce Building in Tampa, a very nice facility, good parking, and only a couple blocks from downtown Ybor City (lots of stuff to do) - this is also where the Tampa SQLSaturday will be held in January 2009. Attendance looked to be around 200-220, which seemed to be down somewhat from previous years but still easily a success.
I did a presentation on how statistics affect performance in SQL. The 'room' I was assigned was one half of the cafeteria, another presenter had the other half. Looking at it I was expecting to have everyone struggle to hear/understand, but the layout brought the attendees in closer than usual and the noise turned out to not be a factor. If anything, having attendees within normal conversational distance made it less formal and more fun.
Only a single SQL track (not unusual) but I think we (sql speakers) probably need to have a better focus on what SQL content we do at these events. Just as at any of these events the skill levels and interests vary widely, but I think they fall into two main groups; those that don't have a DBA and so need some coaching on routine DBA tasks (not uncommon to find out they do zero index maintenance), and those that want to understand performance/security together. I think SQL injection should just always be on the agenda!
As always I had some good conversations. Some related to PASS that I'll post separately, I talked with Jonathan Kehayias about career plans & consulting, Bayer White (new blog URL) has taken over the Jacksonville .Net Users Group and the related Code Camp so we talked about running user groups and events, talked with Pam Shaw of the Tampa SQL Group about how she was going to organize the facility for SQLSaturday, talked with Joe Healy about Bizspark, and more!
Biggest complaints: materials for attendees weren't pre-stuffed in the event bags, and the lunch line for pizza wasn't well organized.
Finished up the day with a late lunch at The Green Iguana - if you're in Tampa you should try their Baja Burger!
Last event of the year here in Florida. I'll be heading to the Tampa Code Camp to do a presentation on statistics in SQL Server, and I'll be at a sponsor table for the day on behalf of both End to End Training and JumpstartTV. This is typically a good event, curious to see if the Dec date helps or hurts - they had to change from the typical summer date due to size restrictions at the originally planned site. I'm looking forward to sitting in on a .Net session or two, I enjoy SQL but it's nice to see what's going on in related areas.
In recent years this event has been held in July, but this year they ran into problems when the planned venue placed a cap of 250 attendees on the event. Rather than turn people away organizer Keith Kabza postponed the event until a better location could be found. Call for speakers is open at www.tampacodecamp.com, and the event will be held at The KFORCE BLDG, 1001 E Palm Ave, Tampa, FL 33605. Ranks right up there with the best events in Florida.
I'm a couple weeks last posting this, but wanted to get my notes down anyway for future use. The goal of the event was 300 attendees, my guess (unconfirmed) was about 100 actual attendees, this due primarily to the hurricane that had just visited the area and having the location of the event change only 2 days prior to the event. The people I saw at the event were having their usual good time so on that level it was a success. Overall I thought the event suffered some from the change in leadership of the Jax .Net Group that happened last year and there is a learning curve to these events!
Somewhat harshly, this is the 2nd year that the Jax event has been so-so, compared to the Orlando/S Fla/Tampa Code Camps. I hope the Jax team will take a look at those other events in Fla and their own recent experiences to make next years event first class again.
Just had a note from John Magnabosco, the schedule for the event on Oct 4, 2008 has been published. I'll be there doing a presentation on Replication, Steve Jones is doing one on Green Computing, and I see Kevin Kline has two on the agenda as well.
This is a true community event, with content on .Net, Sharepoint, Enterprise Development, and more - about 36 sessions so far. Hope to see you there!
My friend Jonas Stawski just sent me a note about the upcoming Code Camp in Argentina on October 24, 2008. They have a goal of 1000 attendees - yes, one thousand. Ambitious! It's their second time running this so I expect it to go well. I'm not planning to attend, but posted here in case someone wants to expand their horizons and their resume at the same time.
