Dan Rigsby - Coding Up Style

I made it out to Wilmington, Ohio today to attend the Central Ohio Day of .Net (CODoDN).  There hasn’t been much representation of Indianapolis in Ohio thus far. I have session out here on Wcf and no one seems to know any other speakers from Indiana. There must be some magical barrier between Indiana and Ohio (or just miles and miles of open fields).  I am hoping to change that a bit today. I have met a lot of really smart people out here: some speakers and some attendees. (James Bender, Amanda Laucher, Michael Neel, Jay Wren, Jim Holmes, Jeff McWherter, David Redding, Brian Prince, Jeff Blankenburg , Alexei Govorine, Joe Wirtley, Matt Casto, Michael Eaton, etc).  Although I knew no one out here, everyone I met made me feel like I was part of the family.

According to my sources there are 172 people here today (although 300 were registered).  There are 5 sessions rooms each holding around 25-40 people.  Which fortunately means that there is free lunch for everyone!  Some sessions have been pretty packed. While others have had only a handful.  The popular topics so far have been Asp.Net MVC and F#.

Overall the presentations have been going well.  The audience and the speakers have all been light hearted and seem relaxed.  The talks I have attended have been going well.  I think the funniest so far has been Michael Neel’s "Church of the Agile".  He took the approach of making agile seem like a religion.  He came out in full robes and hood with candles lit.  It felt like more of a cult than a church, but definitely fun.

My session ended up being plagued by ghosts.  My slides started moving on their own, and Visual Studio would close windows.  Probably someone in the audience hijacking my bluetooth.  I’ll be sure to turn that off in the future.  Overall, I’m afraid I spoke over people’s heads, but I got a number of good comments afterwards.  Some people actually like a presentation that is chalked full of content I guess.  But realistically, how can you really do Wcf justice in 70 mins?  I did pack the house though.  I had 55+ people in a room that didn’t seat that many.  A few people stood or sat against the wall, but I did see people peak in, see that it was full, and walk away.

I did attend James Bender’s talk over Reliable Messaging in Wcf.  It was a really good introduction to the topic and MSMQ, lots of demos, and lots of pictures.  He was lucky enough to not have the ghosts invade his PC.

I finished the day at Brian Prince’s talk over "Soft Skillz" for the developer.  This talk was more of a set away from the .Net talks that you would expect at a Day of Dot Net event.   This focus was more on skills that developers need to succeed based off his many years in the field and the knowledge he has gained from others.  I ended up getting a copy of Halo 3 at this talk due to my mad photography skills.  The talk ended with a question of creativity: "If you have an infinite supply of bricks, what would you do raise money for you usergroup/church/school".  A number of ideas were thrown out like "Build brick pants", "Pant names on bricks, etc.  Surprising my idea of "Building a space elevator out of bricks" won the sweet prize of a "Heroes Happen {Here}" jacket (see Swag Score picture).  The jacket will go along nicely with all of the "Heroes {Community} Launch" events  that I have left to give.

I was pretty pleased with the event.  The talks contained a lot of "meat" and were very knowledgeable.  Sometimes these events have more of what I would call "marketing" slides.  The guys in Ohio really made sure that that wasn’t the case.  I will definitely be attending (and hopefully speaking) next year.

There were about 25 people at the after party (dinner at Max and Erma’s), mostly speakers, but there were a few attendees.  Jeff Blankenburg hosted an after-after party upstairs which was a blast.  There were around 22 people there and Jeff made sure that everyone not only had plenty to eat and drink, but also had a great time.   The party centered around a .Net Poker Tournament (16 members), food, and conversation.  I joined the poker game, lost early, and scored  sweet Visual Studio 2008 backpack (see Swag Score picture).

For those who are interested, a zip of all of my Wcf slides, notes, and demos is available here: Materials- IntroductionToWcf.zip.

And if anyone who attended CoCDoDN is not yet following me on twitter, follow me: http://twitter.com/danrigsby.  And subscribe to this blog.

Thank you Ohio!

Edit: A great little video summary of the entire event can be found here: http://cincinnatirecruiter.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/central-ohio-day-of-net-2008/.