Tomorrow is the start of my first CodeMash experience, at the Precompiler. There are so many tutorials that I want to check out, but I will mostly be hiding out in the CodeJam.

It all started in 2007, when my buddy Russ from work told me about CodeMash. He's gone to past CodeMashes, and whenever he talks about it, his excitement gets to me. I didn't meet him in time for 2007, but he could have talked me into 2008. However, I also was uncertain of my vacation time and how I would handle taking time off with my husband. Lame excuses, I know... but I didn't go to CodeMash in 2008.

Of course, I met more people who reminded me of my epic fail - including Jeff Blankenburg, Mike Eaton, Michael Letterle, and Joe O'Brien. Thanks to the push from all of these guys (and all the others who helped), I made it a point to set the dates aside. But I had talked with one of my friends earlier in the year, and he had figured that I'd go and enjoy my first year as an attendee and worry about presenting there the following year. As much as that sounded like a good idea, I knew better - it was pretty much expected that I'd submit talks for it.

So it's my first CodeMash, and I am going as an event co-lead (CodeJam), presenter (IronPython), and attendee. Thanks to my friends for encouraging me to attend. I've been looking forward to it for the past few months, and it's finally here.

If you are there and you see me, come up and introduce yourself! I look forward to meeting you there!

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, Jeff Blankenburg, Joe O'Brien, Michael Letterle, Mike Eaton

As I listen to the .NET Rocks! recorded at devLink, I realized that I haven't recapped my experience. So here we go...

Over August 21-24th, I was down in Tennessee, networking with many developers while attending devLink. This was definitely an interesting experience.

I joined a lot of my Twitter friends on the devLink bus ride down, leaving late Wednesday night. It was great to be running with them again - I love hanging out with them. Unfortunately, the bus we took was meant more for short day trips rather than the long trip from (in my case) Toledo to Nashville. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get much sleep.

Now if I ever have to run around sleep-deprived, this is the group that I'd prefer to be with. We tend to keep each other going. Since my Thursday was pretty well packed, I knew I had to run around with little chance of sleep. Thursday afternoon, I spent some time with some of the most influential devs in the region and had a great time networking with them. I'm definitely looking forward to the ideas that some of us tossed around, and I'm looking forward to working with these guys on various upcoming events.

Thursday evening, I attended the devLink VIP dinner. I had completed a survey on their site and won a spot from a drawing. It was neat to see so many people there. After the dinner, I floated between the poker gathering thrown by Jeff Blankenburg and the gathering in the hotel bar. My pictures from both of those gatherings can be seen in my devLink pics on Flickr.

Friday, I was still tired, but I wasn't going to let my unbalanced sleep state throw me off completely. After surviving the keynote, I decided to head to the opening circle of open spaces. On my way there, I saw Sirena Benefield - an ITT tech student that Brian Prince brought to the community - at the Microsoft booth. I was able to get her to come with me to the opening circle. Alan Stevens was the open spaces facilitator, and I think he did a great job of getting things rolling. Various topics came out - including community building, how comments are evil, Microsoft and open source, agile practices, Ruby, and even one on suggestions for a university and their computer program.



After the open spaces opening circle, it was lunch time. We had boxed lunches, and I sat with part of the tribe in the open spaces room. That's where I met Mac Fowler, one of the Michigan devLink bus riders. It was nice to enjoy lunch with this group - we get the most random topics whenever we're out.

Friday afternoon, I went to the one session that I wanted to catch that day - Jeff's presentation on Silverlight and some of the cool things that can be done. He covered the 2008 Olympics website, Line Rider, and his own information site.

After that, I took a session off to scope out the conference as a whole. I ended up getting pictures like this one of an open spaces session:



For the last session on Friday, I checked out the open spaces on community. It was great to talk community with this group, as many of them are involved in one form or another. The only thing I didn't like about this open space was that it was at the end of the day. I could see this going further if I hadn't gestured over to Mike Wood that we had to start wrapping it up (since many of us still had to meet the bus shortly after that).

Friday night, there was an attendee party at the hotel. They had Rock Band and Guitar Hero in the game room:



They also had karaoke going on in another room. Snacks included wings, sandwiches, and some other things. There were supposed to be contests going on, but I didn't stay for the whole thing. I ended up running around with a bunch of friends for awhile and then hung out in the lobby chatting for quite a bit afterwards.

I was torn about what I wanted to do on Saturday - the open spaces topics were tempting, but there were a couple talks that I wanted to catch as well. After talking with Jeff McWherter (he who got me my "VBA ALL THE WAY" shirt), I skipped his talk and went to Sara Ford's open space on Microsoft and open source. Having been exposed to open source and the image of the Evil Empire while in my linux days, I was curious to see how this open space would go. It definitely was interesting to see how people got into open source and why some do not. There's definitely a change in Microsoft in who they are now and where they are with open source than what it was in the late 90s, and it's good to see them going the way they are.

In the second slot, I could have seen Brian's Soft Skillz talk again - this time with cake! It was his birthday, so he celebrated with cake in his presentation. (No, the cake wasn't a lie.) However, I went to the other presentation that Brian was supposed to give at the same time - the presentation that he and Jeff Blankenburg did for the launch event. Now I had heard about this presentation plenty of times before, but the launches in my area conflicted with some of my go-live dates, so I missed it. I'm glad I caught this presentation - I learned a bit more with Visual Studio 2008. For example, did you know that if you had the Intellisense dropdown up but needed to see behind it, you could press the Ctrl key and the Intellisense dropdown would go transparent? It was nice to see the Apply Styles dialog, which shows just how the CSS class would look. Of course, the sexiness known as AJAX happened to get mentioned as well - who thought a cleaning agent would be labeled sexy? ;)

We had another day of boxed lunches, and after lunch, I ended up checking out James Bender's intro to WCF presentation. I work a little with web services, but I'd love to learn more about WCF, since that's the way web services are going. What I loved about this presentation is that James uses a simple example that everyone can relate to. He explains concepts using people in the audience as an example. This was a presentation where I actually didn't get lost and feel over my head in (as I usually end up feeling with WCF talks).

There must have been something with the 2:30pm sessions, as once again I took time off to take pictures of the conference and to call home and sing "Happy Birthday" to my mom. After that, I caught some of the closing circle of open spaces.

The last session of the conference was our closing keynote with Joe Stagner from Microsoft. After his talk, the devLink team did giveaways - and two of the bigger prizes were won by fellow devLink bus mates.

After the conference wrapped up, we headed back to the hotel to eat and then load the bus and head home. The bus ride home was okay - I managed to get some sleep (after hitting the point of being desperate for sleep) and was awoken by Mike Eaton on the ride home, who let me know that the bus blew a tire. We were about an hour away from Cincinnati and ended up having to wait 4 hours before we could get back on the road again. If ever I had to get stuck on the road with a group, I'd hope it'd be this group. We continued our random discussions and waited while they replaced the tire. The only other headache about getting home was our ride from Columbus to Toledo by way of Cleveland/Sandusky. Either we had the case of a lame GPS or the driver just wasn't paying attention... either way, we got back to Toledo-ish a bit later than usual.

Overall, I am glad I had the opportunity to go on this trip. I went with the goal to meet new people and maybe learn new things. I managed to do both, and now I have even more people that I can talk with. I'm definitely looking forward to devLink 2009!

Labels: Alan Stevens, Brian H. Prince, devLink, Heartland Open Spaces, James Bender, Jeff Blankenburg, Jeff McWherter, Mike Eaton, open source, open spaces, Sara Ford, Sirena Benefield

Oh the craziness we geeks go through for people and charities that we care about! So James Avery and Mike Eaton are at it again, and hilarities will ensue down at CodeStock. I'm a bit bummed that I can't be there to experience this in person, but I'm looking forward to the pictures.

James made a shirt for Mike to wear during his presentation down there, and many people are donating money that will go to the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. Mike has all the donating details in his blog post.

The stunts geeks will go through to raise money! Go check it out!

Labels: Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, James Avery, Mike Eaton

It's day 2 of Ann Arbor Give Camp, and I'm running on almost 41 hours without sleep. Between working on our project and chatting with many talented people here, I've been distracted and excited enough to not really feel a need for sleep. Not only have I been working with an awesome team - Mark Gilbert, Brian Kriesel, and Kevin Shin - but I've also met a lot more people and have had a lot of laughs.

We had two meetings today as a gathering, to make sure that all the teams were on schedule. If we had any issues, we let them know and other people came out to help us. We helped the SDL EQ team today with some Telerik Sitefinity issues and got them up to speed with the rest of us in the Sitefinity boat. John Hopkins has been a great Sitefinity resource for us this weekend, and if you ever have to implement Sitefinity, I'd recommend you talk with him. He has been so patient with all of us, and even though there are still some outstanding issues, we know that we can count on him to help us out.

Special thanks to Matt from Verio and the other guy (whose name I can't remember offhand) who stopped by and helped us work out some CSS issues. We managed to get a great foundation in place, and I hope our charity - Golightly Academy of IT - really likes our work. We'll get to show off our final website on Sunday to our charity contact, John Mullinax.

Thanks to the sponsors of Ann Arbor Give Camp - Microsoft, Domino's Pizza, SRT Solutions, Verio, Infragistics, TechSmith, Telerik, Washtenaw Community College, Dunkin Donuts, Arbor Brewing Company, Aubree's, Busch's, Trader Joe's, and DevMavens. From providing our meals to helping in other ways, this event couldn't have happened without their help. Check out the Ann Arbor Give Camp sponsors page to see how they contributed.

Thanks to all of those who worked to put the event together - including Jennifer Marsman, Josh Holmes, Mike Eaton, Greg Campeau, Todd from Domino's, and everyone else who helped them in the planning. Planning an event takes a team; pulling off one this successful takes a great team!

This has been a great experience, and I am glad Mike Eaton talked me into coming up here this weekend. I look forward to showing what are team came up with and blogging about the weekend overall.

Labels: Ann Arbor Give Camp, Golightly Academy of IT, Jennifer Marsman, John Hopkins, Josh Holmes, Mike Eaton, Sitefinity, sponsors

So Mike Eaton talked me into coming out to Ann Arbor rather than working remotely for Ann Arbor Give Camp. After a crazy week, I was wondering how I'd handle the 3 hour ride up here. Now here I am, up at 3am, watching John Mullinax and Jonathan Thorndycraft play Guitar Hero down in the break room.

I'm on the team for Golightly Academy of IT. Our charity contact is John Mullinax, and he's been awesome to work with so far. We've got an interesting site design ahead, using Sitefinity. Special thanks to John Hopkins for hooking us up with a license for it.

None of us have worked with Sitefinity before, so we're looking forward to tinkering with it. Our contact at Verio - Matt Lagrotte - is phenomenal. There are a few of us who are using Sitefinity, and Matt's been very instrumental in getting us going, as it doesn't go through the install gracefully without working a little magic.

I'm just hanging out now with Jennifer Marsman, Dave Redding, Mike Eaton, Jonathan Thorndycraft, Chris Roland, Marty Adams, and a couple other people in the break room for a bit. There was some Guitar Hero action going on, and there's talk of Halo.

I'm looking forward to seeing how our project turns out. Golightly Academy of IT will have a web presence by the end of the weekend, and I'll link to it on Sunday to show what our team comes up with! For not knowing anyone I'm on my team, I'm very excited to see that we come together quite well. This has been an enjoyable experience so far and I look forward to seeing how this will turn out.

Stay tuned for more coverage from Ann Arbor Give Camp!

Labels: Ann Arbor Give Camp, Chris Roland, Dave Redding, Jennifer Marsman, Jonathan Thorndycraft, Marty Adams, Mike Eaton

As I was told, July 3^rd was Contribupendence Day. So the challenge was to write 5 recommendations on {insert social networking site name here}. Like James Bender, as soon as I started writing them, my list started to grow. So I have my first five done, and I have quite a few more on my list that I want to tackle throughout this weekend.

So, in no particular order, the 5 recommendations I wrote on Plaxo were:

• Mike Eaton:Whether it's an idea for a presentation, an event, or even for a program, Mike is extremely enthusiastic about technology and knows how to turn an idea into a reality. He's quite involved with planning events for the developer community, and if he hears a good idea, he's one of the first to volunteer to help out. He's also making his rounds as a speaker, and his presentations are practical and easy to follow. I look forward to seeing more of his presentations and attending his events.


• Joe Fiorini: Working with Joe on planning a technology conference, I was extremely pleased at how well he was willing to step up with a little direction. Joe has a lot of passion for technology, which drives him to getting involved in such things as Cleveland Startup Drinks and Cleveland Ruby Brigade. I am incredibly honored to have worked with someone with as much passion and promise as Joe.


• Mike Letterle: I was quite excited to work with Mike on the development of the website for a technology conference that we helped plan. Whether we were looking at adding features or trying to get things more unified, Mike was definitely willing to take anything on. Mike also has an interest in the Ruby language and would be one of those people who could convince others to switch to Ruby with his interest in the language.


• John Stockton: I was honored to work under John's leadership when planning a tech conference. John made sure that we'd meet our deadlines to pull off a successful event. I've also watched him give a presentation. John gears his presentations so that his audience can easily follow them. He's well-informed and his passion will take him far.


• Jeff Blankenburg: From seeking out others who share his love of technology to bringing us together and truly putting the "unity" in community, Jeff is an invaluable asset to the developer community. Whether he's blogging, presenting, or just getting a group together, he continues to provide us with opportunities to network and go far in our careers. His contagious enthusiasm is what reawakened my passion for technology. I've learned quite a bit from him, and I look forward to seeing where he will lead us...

I'm looking forward to posting the rest of these recommendations. Thanks to Jeff for coming up with this idea!

Labels: Contribupendence Day, James Bender, Jeff Blankenburg, Joe Fiorini, John Stockton, Michael Letterle, Mike Eaton, Plaxo

I'm currently listening to the latest episode of Deep Fried Bytes while thinking about the deep fried Twinkies I had last week. Episode 3 is about Twitter war stories. After hearing others' stories, I figured I'd share one of my own.

One of Sarah's Favorite Twitter War Stories

I can't tell you how I found him for sure, but I somehow came across Michael Eaton on Twitter. At one point, I saw Joel Ross pull a picture out that involved Mike and the band Ratt. (I'll spare him the link in this post.) It was quite entertaining to watch his reaction every time Joel pulled out that picture.

One night, Mike Eaton was sending me a bunch of tinyurls to the World of Warcraft (WoW) account pages. Every now and then, the WoW guys on Twitter try to get me to resubscribe to WoW. He kept telling me it was fun while using the tinyurls to attempt to lure me back in. But I know better than to trust his tinyurls depending on the context, so I tinyurled the picture and asked if WoW was as fun as that pic.

I pulled the picture on him in person at Central Ohio Day of .NET this year, and I knew that payback would be hell. But at the same time, I just couldn't resist. And that's how the VBA rumors about me got started. We hung out quite a bit that day, and I'm definitely glad to have found him.

So thanks to Twitter, I now have someone else that I enjoy hanging out with and teasing. But I wouldn't have met him if it weren't for Twitter.

Comments on Deep Fried Bytes in General

I'm not much of a podcast listener. To me, podcasts are like talk radio, and that typically bores me to tears. But Deep Fried Bytes has me hooked, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what else they have planned. So if they keep posting blog-worthy podcasts, count on seeing more posts from me on it.

Deep Fried Bytes is almost as heavenly as deep fried Twinkies! So if you haven't gone there yet, get your helping of Deep Fried Bytes now!

Labels: Chris Woodruff, Deep Fried Bytes, Joel Ross, Keith Elder, Mike Eaton, Twitter

The following IRC discussion is real. There are no actors in this scene - just real .NET devs chatting on random geeky stuff, which got me thinking...

21:45 <@mjeaton> ok, so given a typical DoDN or Code Camp...what about
 an "intro track".  Have one track (4-5 sessions) dedicated entirely 
to beginners...and when I say beginners, I mean OOP 101, SQL 101, etc.  
Super basic stuff.
21:45 <+nkohari> that's not a bad idea
21:45 <+nkohari> you'd have to market it correctly though
21:46 <+nkohari> people might be embarrassed to attend a 100-level
 track course
21:46 <@sadukie> actually....
21:46 <@sadukie> what about doing a day of 100-level topics for college kids?
21:46 <@sadukie> since .NET isn't really covered well in most
 college classrooms, it'd be a good way to expose them to what's out there

When I was in college, I was involved with the professional computing groups and I managed to also get involved with the Toledo Area Linux Users Group. It helped that they had their meetings right on campus, which made it easy for students to attend. However, the only way we had heard about that group was through the flyers throughout South Engineering. It was never mentioned in any classes or extracurricular meetings.

Being the vice president and later the president of the student ACM chapter, I would have loved to team up with the local user groups to get our members a view of what it's like in the real world. We did mention the linux user group meetings when I was in charge, as the linux group was cool enough to let a Microsoft-based girl like me speak on non-Microsoft topics with only a little ribbing. However, looking at it in retrospect, I think the student group and the linux user group could've interacted a lot more then.

Talking with these guys tonight really got me thinking back to those days. I think it would've been neat to hear presentations from people in the real world on the Microsoft programming side of things and not just from the LUG. However, if there was a user group for the Microsoft devs back then, we never heard about it, and being in academia, we probably wouldn't have known to even look for these things called "user groups". Since our university had some kind of special agreement in place, we had access to Microsoft software at a discounted rate. It would have been nice to meet people who use it in their career so that we could have taken advantage of that benefit better. Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced the aptly named project DreamSpark, which gives students access to software at no charge. (Thanks to Mike for pointing this out to me.) For a user group to reach out to the student population and show them the coolness factors and possibilities with these software packages, the students may be able to take advantage of what they have offered to them. By reaching out to these students, you may also find that they show their 80/20 standings early on - if you reach out early, you may have someone in the 20% stay in the 20% right out of school and wow the community with their talents and innovative ideas.

I think we may have been on to something in our chat. An event of some sort... with 100-level and maybe some 200-level talks... geared to the college kids, so that they know about this thing we have in our world called "community" and the cool and fun things that we can do as developers/architects/DBAs/whatever it is that we do.

I think that this could be pulled off, especially if the community teams up with a student organization - like ACM or IEEE. The student organization should be able to use their ties with the college/university to establish a location for such an event, and we as the community should be able to bring our knowledge and experience to influence them and inspire them. Maybe a Day of .NET College Edition? I'm at a lack for a name, but I think it's something that we as a community should consider.

We should reach out (to the younger community) and touch (influence/inspire) someone!

(Side note: The title was a slogan of Ohio Bell back when I was a kid many moons ago. It just seemed too appropriate in this case. )

Labels: ACM, college, IEEE, influence, inspire, IRC, Mike Eaton, Nate Kohari, Ohio Bell, reach out