/bill's House O Insomnia : Code Camps

Liveblogging the Twin Cities Code Camp

William — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:02:58 GMT

So, D'Arcy and I got here shortly after Chris Williams and Log Vega did. Looks like a pretty decent turnout but I can't tell exactly how many people are here. We had the launch meeting given by Jason Bock and things are off...

Nothing eventful to report yet but hopefully there will be shortly

Twin Cities Code Camp Coming up

William — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:10:00 GMT

Many of my fellow coworkers are going to be speaking at this one and the Twin Cities Code Camp promises to be a great time.I'm arriving in Minneapolis in Friday and hanging around until Sunday so if you're going to be attending, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up

Fun in Greenville

William — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:54:00 GMT

This weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of folks over at Chris William's house , as well as his wonderful family. All the time I lived in Greenville and Spartanburg, I never really knew there was 'the mountains'. Not only did I never really...(read more)

Security Code Camp Schedule

William — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:53:00 GMT

Just in case you're interested, here's the Security Code Camp schedule for this Saturday . If any of you are going to be there, drop me a line and hopefully we can hang out afterward.

Upcoming Code Camp Presentations

William — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 22:39:00 GMT

I'll be doing two code camp presentations in the upcoming weeks.

Mid Atlantic Code Camp [Security] (Register)

I'll be presenting on the security features of Web Service Enhancements (WSE 2.0, 3.0)

Hampton Roads SQL Server User Group (Register)

I'll be presenting on Windows Presentation Foundation or Framework or whatever the marketing inspired name of Avalon is these days.

Charleston Code Camp

William — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:56:00 GMT

For everone that's been asking (and I defintely appreciate your concern), I'm alive and well. Kim's grandmother passed away last week and I've still been busy with moving, book writing and getting used to my new beloved old job . Anyway, tomorrow I'll be presenting a few things at the Charleston, SC Code Camp. I'm doing ADO.NET 2.0, Speech Server and Windows SharePoint Services. Will have more on all of them + pictures hopefully. Gotta think it's going to be pretty nice down there ;-). Anyway, in my sparetime I've been pretty productive so hopefully I'll have some tidbits on Speech Server and using Mono and Windows together in the upcoming week.

Charleston Code Camp

William — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:34:00 GMT

Tobin and Maxim have posted the info for Charlotte code camp. Looks like even my buddy from Bankhead is going to be there too. I'll post links to everyone's blog that will be speaking there but if you're in the area, make sure to attend, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Charleston Code Camp

William — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 03:17:00 GMT

I just got this from my homie Chris Williams:

is proud to announce the first ever:

South Carolina MSDN Code Camp

When: Saturday, September 17th, 2005

Where: Blackbaud, 2000 Daniel Island Drive, Charleston SC 29492

More details to follow: Greater Charleston .NET Users Group

We need volunteers and speakers, oh boy do we ever...

Outside of the fact that Charleston is about as cool as a place as you can ask for, and outside of the fact that Chris is the man, Code Camps are just plain cool. If you're interested in speaking or attending, Here's the Information

Atlanta Code Camp

William — Tue, 17 May 2005 00:34:00 GMT

I'm late to blogging this one, but I'm sure everyone else has covered it. All in all it was a great event. Had a rather hectic beginning though. 5:00 Am on Saturday, Kim and I haeded to the airport to rent a car. Unfortunately, Greenville/Spartanburg is the only airport (even friggin Augusta's airport which is a grass patch with a few Cesna's has 24/7 rent a cars available) that doesn't have 24/7 rentals. So we headed out in her car and got to Atlanta about 2 hours later. For once, i didn't get lost. Got to the Microsoft building in Alpharatta and was very impressed. Checked into code camp, and Kim hung out for a while, then headed over to the W Atlanta. As a side note, if you have never stayed in a W, trust me on this, it's a must. From the first time I visited one I was addicted to it. Atlanta is the most mainstream of the ones I've been to , but it still ROCKS. Anyway, she took off and rented the room. I got a new Lacie USB Drive just for this presentation b/c the week before, I had my visual studio install go bad on me. So about 11:30 I was prepping for my prestentation and the Virtual Machine started up, VS popped up, and then just went away. No error messages, no nothing. No sign whatsoever that there was a problem other than it just disappeared. I had another demo on Tablet PC, but after talking to Michael Earls, I decided to just run through the Speech Server demo again. I asked everyone attending and they were all cool with it so I did it instead.

Before I continue, let me say that I met some really cool people. Tammy Pettway was doing a presentation on the Enterprise Library and I saw the slides she was working on but her presentation was the same time as mine. I wish i could have seen it b/c she was impressive. Got to rap with Maxim Karpov again but dammit, I still haven't get to hear him speak. Everyone that's heard him is like totally captivated by his presentations, so I really hope sometime I can hear him speak.

I sat in the speakers lounge for about 3 hours with Michael Earls, and a few other guys from Magenic. I really like working at Tiba, but just listening to the dialog between the magenic guys, it seems like it's got to be one of the coolest places on earth to work. I got to speak to Steve from Aspsoft who was an awesome guy... wish I had more time to talk to him. Shawn Wildermuth was there but I didn't get a chance to talk to him - and one the off chance he's reading this, I definitely would like to have him autograph a copy of his book for me ;-) The first time I read it, I wasn't that impressed with it, but the more I've read through it, and the more I've followed Shawn, the more I realise that he's a definite bad a55. Wally was there and I got to rap with him for a while.

Mark Dunn was there and I got the chat with him for a few, as well as Todd Fine from RDA and a few other folks, including Chris Williams . Chris gave me a really killer idea. Michael Earls has been doing a lot with X10 and Windows Media Center.. so when he saw my demo, he recommended combining XP Media center, X10 and Speech Server to manipulate stuff in your house. This is my 1st objective next week when I finally get some free time. If I don't have a working demo using XP media Center editiion, X10 and Speech Server by June 1st, please feel free to write me and remind me that I am a lazy procrastinating windbag. As an aside, Todd Fine has a really impressive Avalon demo which is beyond cool. Chris has some of the coolest Tatts that I've seen in a while. i got to thinking that with a litte, you could use Avalon and do some really cool stuff that corresponded to someone's tattos. Gotta rap with Chris about this.

Anyway, I started to feel a little ill toward the end of my speech, and some people had commented that I lost my voice. Kim came and got me and I hit the bed for a quick nap. Was planning on hitting Mortons for dinner. I hit the bed at 4:30 and when I woke up, it was 9:00. Unfortunately, I didn't get to hook up with Jeremy Brayton b/c I slept right through everything. Kim is a great girlfriend but Terrible alarm clock. So we hit Trio's which was ok. Next morning we hit the cheesecake factory and it was awesome as always. Then we headed home. I let Kim drive for the first leg and well.... check out my pictures in the gallery (all of them begin with Atlanta Code Camp).

Finally, when I got back to the office, I got this message from Steve Ballmer:

“Thanks to you give everyone in code camp my thanks and respect “

So now all I need to do is finish the remaining parts of the chapters I have outstanding, get my webcast done, and then get cranking on the X10 Speech Server project.

BTW, I've done more and more with Speech Server recently but can't really guage interest in it. Commercially, I know that adoption is limited to essentially really large installs out there and to date there aren't any books on Speech Server (I may be changing that) . Michael has got me mega impressed with his Media Center stuff and I've seen that http://www.brains-n-brawn.com/ on it, so God only knows what kick a55 implementation he'll come up with. I definitely need to get on the bandwagon too but would apprecaite any feedback in general about what everyone finds interesting (or if there's even interest in Speech Server outside of simple techonological curiousity). I know I'm probably leaving a few people out, but i'll update if I did. All in all I had a great time and would like the thank the Atlanta folks for having me (and giving me an excuse to spend some time at the W again).

P.S. All pictures (many didn't come out unfortunatley, are in the gallery if you're intersted)

Mid-Atlantic Code Camp

William — Sat, 07 May 2005 18:54:00 GMT

Well, I was going to start posting some pics, I have some doosies, but the Proxy at Microsoft isn't letting me through. Oh well, I'll post them later. So far, ran into Wally McClure [The new King of Podcasts], Sahil Malik, Julia Lerman, Andrew Duthie, Brian Noyes and a whole lot of other cool people. The Reston campus is friggin cool - very cool. And unlike Charlotte's campus, I have internet access here. Wally's runnign around doing Podcast interviews. This camp is packed... the turnout is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, I have to leave early today so I can't really hang around. Will have pics up as soon as I get home....

---

Update - well, after I posted this, I finally meet the Scott Allen and from the looks of things, I'll get to meet up with him at MEDC next week. Got to hang out with my Co-Author Got a lot more to say about Code Camp today. The logistics of the event could not have been better. Andrew was asking for patienc considering this was his first event, but the “worst” mistake or oversight that he made was that he bought 5 bags of candy and no one was eating it. If that's the worst screw up you made, well, I need to learn to screw up like that.

----

Also, at Charlotte, if you even got caught thinking about a Camera, you'd get taken out in the back and shot or RoShamBoed. Charlotte was an awesome event, but it was a little bummer that we couldn't snap pictures. I have a ton of pictures from Reston including an iMAC in the server room. Having been at a total of 4 microsoft offices now, all I can say is they sure know how to decorate. I was trying to figure out how to shoplift one of the tablet pcs they had displayed or ay of the furniture. Way cool. Enough babbling, I'll post pics.