I've recently tried to get a lot more involved in the community both the geek community in Brighton, and the actual local community (via it4communities). I decided to make the leap and jump into a Barcamp.. For those who don't know - you can read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp or
http://barcamp.org.
One key part of a barcamp is in this one sentence:
"Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event."
Uh oh - decision time - what to talk about???
I have a couple of topics I'm toying with:
* Source control management: Branching
* Managed Add-in Framework in .NET 3.x
* Skinning buttons in WPF
(Yes, all 3 are based on previous blog posts I've made - and no, that's not cheating...! :))
Problems I forsee:
* SCM is massively important and I've certainly noticed that Branching is misunderstood, misused or completely ignored - but - let's face it - it's the kind of subject which isn't exactly high on the list of things you *really* wanna know about. Is it what can only really be classed as a 'school boy error' to continue down that route?
* The MAF is cool, think of it as a plugin architecture for an application - but without the hard work! - Sounds good - ahh but -> it's not used in Web Apps - (hmmm or can it be? - mental note: check this out) - and I suspect most of the people at barcamp are predominantly web focused...
* WPF Button Skinning - Main issue here again is that this is WPF, and so winapp based - though on the plus side, it's presumably not *that* different from SilverLight - at least conceptually...
Hmmmmph
I'll deffo go down the SCM talk route - probably spiff it up with some zany images of me on the beach, or, thinking better of it - maybe someone else... :)
If anyone else has ideas: I will *gladly* accept them all!!! :)