Code Camp NJ

NYC Code Camp in T - 3, 2, 1....

Chip Lemmon — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:13:00 GMT

Code Camp NYC II – 3/3

Code Camps are "grass roots" mini application platform developer conferences, free of charge to attendees and open to presenters of all stripes and experience.

Get ready for another Code Camp NYC, to be held at Microsoft's offices in Midtown Manhattan (1290 Avenue of the Americas between 51st/52nd Streets) on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 from 9am - 6pm. This is an all-day event with refreshments served, including a developer's "power lunch" (pizza and soda).

This event is being supported by Microsoft but driven by the community: user group activists, developer "influentials", and enthusiastic volunteers.

For more information, visit the code camp website: http://nyc.codecamp.us

Have you registered?

If not, please do! Code camp is this coming Saturday, March 3rd! Here's the link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032330921&Culture=en-US

see you there and ask me about NJUX.

--chaz

"And this time we didn't forget the Gravy!"

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:57:00 GMT

Have you ever seen the now banned Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring a meat hungry dog? If not; the gist of the story line is that a starving dog hatches a plan to get food by running a scam to respond to all of the lost and found ads for a lost cat. The first phase of his plan is to have the cat (an abused captive of the dog) swipe food from the house of the owner it has been returned to. Each time the cat delivers the food, the dog says in disgust "what?! no Gravy?" After a while of this he hatches an even larger scam where he has the cat in a basket with a string attached to the cat and a trap door at the bottom of the basket. Over and over you see the people hand the dog money and the dog yanks the cat at the last minute from the basket.... finally the dog has enough money to buy a meat market. He rejoices with a line..."Acres and Acers of meat and it's mine... all mine!" A total classic.

So what does this have to do with IT? Well this weekend was NJ Code Camp III and a group of us were chatting about how damn busy we've been and how hard it has been to keep up with all the latest stuff. In the blink of an eye we've got SQL Server 2005, VS 2005, Vista, WPF, LINQ, Sharepoint 2007, Office 2007, XAML, ASP.Net 2.0, .Net 3.0, CAB, BizTalk 2006, Atlas, etc. etc.

So back to the cartoon. In the final scene the dog is laying on the metal meat counter having consumed all the meat in the whole store. His gut is just about touching the ceiling and he is moaning in pain. Suddenly the cat enters stage right and he says in the most evil of voices "And this time we didn't forget the Gravy!" The cat proceeds to stick a funnel in the dogs mouth, the dog unable to move can only mutter "no... no... no" and with a few drops of sweat on the brow of the dog, the cat begins to poor in a giant canister of gravy.

Feeling like a dog today....

--chaz

NJ Code Camp II - Presentation Files

Chip Lemmon — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:28:00 GMT

In case you are looking for the NJ Code Camp II Presentation Files ... navigate to the Files tab and expand the “Presentations” node of the tree. There is a sub folder for NJ Code Camp 2. You will find the files there. Or now, you can just click on this link!

--chaz

NJ Code Camp II... Success!

Chip Lemmon — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:23:00 GMT

Well as I've come to expect after a Code Camp I am recharged and psyched about programming again. Like NJ Code Camp I, I met a lot of great people and made some new friends.

I have to say that I'm a bit shocked that there was more controversy in my “Down with Datasets!” session than my session on “Living in an Out-Sourced World”. I appreciate the honest and open dialog in both sessions. I received some great challenges to my stance on using custom objects over datasets. I really got out of this session exactly what I had hoped to and that was some real good discussion on overall architecture and design principals. Even if John and Kevin left me bruised from the pro-dataset camp. It was still great fun.

I was truly amazed at how my “Living in an Out-Sourced World” presentation went. First of all I was nervous about presenting such a risky topic. Secondly I wasn't sure that many people would attend something a bit off topic. Yet I felt that Out-Sourcing and Off-Shoring were such important topics for the developer community that I had to take the chance. And what do you know? People came. And people participated. The big shocker though was how the attendees were very academic about Out-Sourcing and Off-Shoring. I'd say 99% of the attendees felt that Out-Sourcing/ Off-Shoring was an integral part of the way business is conducted today. They also seemed to observe that there was a fair balance of pros and cons to the practice. We even got into discussing globalization, intellectual property concerns and innovation. I'd say this session exceeded my expectations by 200%. And I sincerely thank each and every attendee of this session as I really just moderated as you all provided the content.

I was fortunate enough to attend Dan Krhla's session on VB2005 for VB6 Developers. I am already fairly well versed in VS 2005 VB & C# and I still walked away with some great tips! And thank you John Baird for an excellent presentation on N-Unit. Unfortunately I only caught about half of it before I had to leave the room, but what I saw was great. John's enthusiasm about Test Driven Development and Agile Software Development got me excited about it too.

Lastly, thanks to Peter Laudati, Scott Watermasysk, and Don Demcsak for putting NJ Code Camp II together. I can hardly wait for NJ Code Camp III! Please remember to subscribe to the RSS feed at the NJ Code Camp site for updates! And if you missed NJ Code Camp II, you missed a lot. Be sure to attend the next one.

--chaz

Trouble Registering for NJ Code Camp II

Chip Lemmon — Wed, 24 May 2006 09:47:00 GMT

If you have trouble registering on line for NJ Code Camp II because of your “Live ID” there is a way around it. When you click on the Register link if you recieve an error message that there was trouble with your Live ID, simply choose to log on with a different e-mail account. When prompted, go ahead and use the same e-mail account again anyway and you should get through.

According to the message on the right side of the page Microsoft is aware of the problem and it is not specific to NJ Code Camp. It is a Live ID/Passport issue.

--chaz

Calling all Jersey Geeks

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 08 May 2006 23:56:00 GMT

Help! I so desperately want to present at NJ Code Camp II on June 3rd. But what? I am kicking around a couple of ideas and want to know what would get you to my session? Here are some ideas I've been kicking around...

1. One or more Application Blocks in the Enterprise Library - Code demo
    Just a display of how to incorporate these in your code.

2. Fun with Serialization - Code demo
    Show multiple ways to serialize and deserialize your objects to/from disk on a fat client.

3-A. Down with Datasets! - Code and debate
    I only use datasets as a transport mechanism. Like a REAL programmer I use custom objects to manage my data in memory. What's better is I bind UI components to my custom objects! Come tell me why I am wrong or share your enthusiasm for my extremist point of view.

3-B. Construct This (a follow up to 3A) - Code demo
        A demonstration on multiple ways to “hydrate“ objects by overloading constructors.

4. Source Control and Project Folder Organization - Best Practices Talk
    As boring as this topic may seem, I've seen great debate and dispare. My way may not be the only way, but it works!

Tell me if you like any of these or shoot me an idea of your own. All code demos will be provided in {GASP} VB.Net. I'm looking forward to your feedback!!!!

--chaz

NJ Code Camp - An Honor and a Privilege

Chip Lemmon — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 22:04:00 GMT

Update: My presenations are now up on the NJ Code Camp Site. I don't really think the Power Point does the presentation justice, but it's there.

Thanks to the many talented and wonderful people that attended NJ Code Camp 2005 this Saturday. This was my first time presenting at a Code Camp and the experience exceeded my every expectation. I came away with a lot of new ideas and I'm really excited to continue working with the NJ developer community.

A special thanks to Rob Jackson (Microsoft), Scott Watermasysk, and Don Demcsak (DonXML) for organizing a true community event. Nice job! Congratulations and a job well done to my fellow presenters as well!

(I will update this post when we have a place to push out our code and presentation.)

We couldn't have ended the day any better then with a special presentation from the guys at .Net Rocks! doing their VS 2005 Road Trip. There presentations were awsome as you would expect and Carl was absolutely hilarious on the guitar. If all that weren't enough, I got to join Carl, Richard and Geoff after the show for an interview with a few other attendees and presenters. I really must correct an oversight from my interview though. I really need to give props to Eric Evans whose book, “Domain-Driven Design”, Addison Wesley inspired my talk and had great influence on some of my comments.

If there is one learning I have walked away from this experience with, it is that I think there is a great need for training and support for beginners in Enterprise Level Development. I barely scratched the surface on “Knowledge Crunching” and defining a Ubiquitous Language, but that was more than enough for a 1 hour presentation to an unknown mix of skill sets. And the true target audience (RAD developers and early career developers) that I had in mind when putting this presentation together responded. They told me, that they need more of this kind of information. I think it is a challenge for those who do this work on a daily basis to present digestible bits of this type of information more frequently. If we really want our peers to follow the tenants of good enterprise level application development that is the challenge we must take on as a community.

Look around and tell me how many beginner level presentations there are on RUP, Domain Driven Design, Test Driven Development, Object Modeling or even Use Case Modeling. I don't think there are many. I think the reason is simply that these are very complex topics and are perhaps by nature not appealing to developers. With the wrong title/advertisement we may scare away those that are not well versed in these topics. Don't get me wrong, we should by no means “dumb-down” the material, we just need to make it digestible. We also need to help developers of all skill levels realize that these are tools/skills that will improve software they produce and ease enhancements and maintenance long term. I don't think developers don't want to do the right thing, they just don't know how, why and when to do it.

--chaz