I recently attended CodeMash, the biggest-little-conference around, and had a great time.
While the sessions and content at the conference are first class, they aren’t what bring people back. Its the conference attendees, the hallway conversations, and the vibe that bring folks back and make the conference what it is.
As a matter of fact, I only made it to a hand full of the sessions this year.
Why? Because the rest of the time I was caught up in Open Spaces talks and adhoc conversations with wicked-smart guys like Dustin Campbell, Keith Elder, Bill Wagner, Jim Weirich, <list continues ad nauseam>... Oh yeah, and rockin' out with Rock Band - Rock Star Scott Hanselman also lead to a few missed sessions.
Photo courtesy of Buckeye01... whoever that is. :)
And I recorded a podcast!
For the second year in a row Joe Brinkman, of DotNetNuke fame, and I got together for an Open Source on .net Open Spaces chat. This year we were joined by Jay Wren (contributor to Castle, Boo, and many more), Sara Ford (CodePlex), Kevin Devine (Euclid Public Library) and Michael Kismal (WebDevRadio). And to sweeten the pot Michael just happened to record the talk and turn it into an impromptu podcast.
The sound quality is decent and the talk itself is pretty entertaining. At points the conversation did start to go on a tangent - a mini Microsoft love-fest and harrowing stories of heroics - but Michael managed to pull us back in. And hey, what do you want... it was just a bunch of geeks talking about Open Source and why we love it.
Oh, and one critique I have for myself: I need to sloooow down, and think, when I talk. My mind tends to race and only fragmented sentences come out.
Enough rambling, go give it a listen!
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