Thursday, December 21, 2006

CodeMash Update

CodeMash: January 18-19, 2007 at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH
www.codemash.org

The Early Bird rate of $99 has expired (fellow procrastinators: I'm sorry!).  The new registration fee is $149.

However, the Kalahari Resort has allowed us to continue the great deal on the hotel rooms ($88/night + tax for a "Hut" room) until 12/28, unless the hotel sells out before then.

So, for $325 + tax, you get to stay two nights at an indoor waterpark resort in the middle of January, plus attend CodeMash, which is looking to be THE EVENT of 2007 that you don't want to miss! 

In fact, two people from London, England (that's like this whole other country that's an ocean away from us) thought the same thing, and they are flying over just to attend!  Why?  One primary reason cited was because there is nothing like this event in Europe.

Jim Holmes, fellow conference organizer, user group leader, and friend of mine, summed the event up quite nicely in the following (which I have permission to plagerize):

I’m making one last pitch to you in the hopes of convincing you to register and attend this terrific event.

Why is CodeMash something you should consider attending?  You should strongly consider attending because you’ll have the opportunity to attend sessions and keynotes from some of the software development industry’s finest minds.  We’ve three keynote addresses from luminaries who have been motivating forces behind some of the most significant products, methodologies, and changes in the development industry:

 

  • Bruce Eckel – Internationally Recognized Speaker and Author of “Thinking in Java”
  • Neal Ford – Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Recognized Speaker on Languages and Compilers.
  • Scott Guthrie – General Manager, Microsoft Developer Division. 

Other internationally-recognized speakers include:

 

  • Scott Ambler – Internationally Recognized Speaker and Author on Agile Development and Database Refactoring. 
  • Marry Poppendieck – Recognized Expert on Lean Development Methodologies. 
  • Jay Pipes – North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL. 
  • Bill Wagner – Expert on all things C# and author of “Effective C#”

If that’s not enough then consider that we’ve 40 sessions covering an immense range of technologies including .NET, PHP, Java, Ruby, and other platforms.  We’re holding sessions on design, architecture, testing, agile methodologies, and deep dives into areas of the technologies I just mentioned.  Some of the session topics include:

 

  • Curry Favor with Closures: An Introduction to Functional Programming in C# and VB.NET (Bill Wagner, Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP and author of “Effective C#”)
  • SOA as a Conversation (Ken Faw, Regional Practice Director, Perficient, Inc.)
  • The Productive Programmer (Neal Ford, editor “No Fluff, Just Stuff”)
  • Let NHibernate Be Your Data Access Layer (Dave Donaldson, Microsoft MVP)
  • Lean Software Development (Mary Poppendeick, internationally recognized expert on agile/lean development and author of “Lean Software Development”)
  • Maximum Velocity MySQL (Jay Pipes, North American Community Relations Manager, MySQL)
  • EJB3 – What’s New? (Joseph Faisal Nusairat, author of “Beginning JBoss Seam”)
  • Ruby on Rails for Java Developers (Rob Stevenson, Quick Solutions, Inc.)

CodeMash is a terrific opportunity for developers of all ilk in this region.  I encourage you to register and attend.  It’s a conference that should not be missed!

 

Also see Jim's post on the value proposition for management to send developers to events like this:

http://frazzleddad.blogspot.com/2006/11/why-conferences-matter-and-how-to.html