Category: Conferences

Software Dev Conferences

Recently a discussion popped up on the Seattle ALT.NET group. I put together some of the conferences that were brought up. I may, or may not, be attending some of these.  So far this is my “Ruby on Rails” and “.NET” Conference list.  I really need to figure out with big data, NoSQL, and Cloud Computing Conferences (asides from the conferences I’ll be working with NW Cloud to organize) that I should attend.

Are there any conferences that I haven’t listed for 2011 that I should attend? Any that you are attending? Let me know, I’m putting together a list to figure out what would be a good conference list to attend for this year.

SPLASH 2011
October 22 TO 27
Hilton Portland & Executive Tower
Portland, Oregon, USA
http://splashcon.org/2011/

Node.conf
May 5th, 2011
Portland, OR
http://nodeconf.com/

Jsconf
May 2nd & 3rd, 2011
Portland, OR
http://2011.jsconf.us/

Dates: Mar 4-5, 2011. (fri-sat). ($220)
7000 State Highway 161,
LC1 Building (Right Tower)
Irving, TX 75039
http://www.jointechies.com/

March 17-18, 2011
Salt Lake City Public Library
210 E 400 S
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
http://mtnwestrubyconf.org/

February 3-5, 2011
Crowne Plaza
San Pedro, CA
http://www.larubyconf.com/

Re: Cloudcamp Seattle

Summary Statement:  CloudCamp rocked!  I got to meet a lot of smart people and have a lot of smart conversations!

Ok, so I probably shouldn’t write the summary statement first, but I’m not one for standard operating procedure.  But I digress, I’ll dive straight into the cloud topics and the event itself.

The event kicked off with an introduction and lighting talks by Tony Cowan, Mithun Dhar, Steve Riley, John Janakiraman, Margaret Dawson, and Patrick Escarcega.  Margaret and Steve really stood out to me in their talks, I’ll be keeping an eye on any future speaking engagements they may have.

One of the quotes that led off CloudCamp during the lightning talks was, “If you’re still talking about if the cloud is secure…” you’re already behind, out of touch, missing the reality of it, or simply not understanding the technology.  After further conversation though, it really boils down to the most common excuse.  The statement “the cloud isn’t secure enough” translates to “I’ve got my fingers in my ears and am not listening to your cloud talk”.

Margaret Dawson from Hubspan really took a great stance with her lightning talk.  The talk was titled “To Cloud or Not To Cloud” with “Don’t buy the cloud, buy a solution” as the summarized idea.  The other thing that she mentioned during her talk was she likes adding “AASes” to cloud computing, such as “BPaaS”.  I’ll admit I laughed guiltily along with a few dozen others and forgot to note what BPaaS stands for.  Whoops!  🙂

An attempt at creating a generalized definition of cloud computing was also made.  It was stated that we can, as a community, agree on the following definitions of cloud computing.  The definition involved three parts:

  • Cloud computing is on demand.
  • Cloud computing can be turned off or on as needed.
  • Cloud computing can autoscale without issue to handle peaks and lulls in demand.

Another funny statement came from Dave Neilsen (@daveneilsen), CloudCamp Organizer, “I agree, the cloud isn’t right for everyone” to which someone in the crowd jokingly hollered back “You’re Fired!”  The energy in the audience and each of the sessions was great!

After the lightning talks Dave Neilsen led the conference with a cloud panel to field some questions.  A few topics related to this wikileaks thing 😛 came up along with some others.  I tired diligently to take good notes during this time, but it was a bit fast paced and I left the note taking to be more involved in listening.

These activities kicked off the overall event, which then led into everyone breaking out to different sessions depending on topics created by the attendees.  The sessions included (and I may have missed one or two);

  • Open Source Software in the Cloud
  • Best Practices for Low Latency
  • Intro to Cloud Computing + Windows Azure
  • How does a traditional Microsoft Stack fit in Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Google Cloud Services
  • What are your personal projects?

As another aspect of this review I wanted to pull in a few tweets that mentioned or had something useful in relation to the #cloudcamp + #seattle hashtags from last night.

…with that, my cloudcamp review is fini.  Hope to see everyone at the next Seattle Cloud Event!

CloudCamp Seattle!

Cloudcamp Seattle (December 1st)
Cloudcamp Seattle (December 1st)

Tomorrow is the big day!  So be sure to come check out CloudCamp Seattle!  We’re going to have a lot of great attendees, some rock star lightning talks and more.  Make sure to get registered ASPA (click on the CloudCamp image above).

Location:
Amazon HQ
426 Terry Avenue North (At South Lake Union)
2nd Floor Conference Room
Seattle, WA 98109

Final Schedule:
6:00pm Registration, Networking w/ Food & Drinks
6:30pm Welcome and Thank yous
6:45pm Lightning Talks (5 minutes each)
Tony Cowan – WebSphere CloudBurst/Hypervisor Editions
Mithun Dhar – Microsoft Azure
Steve Riley – Amazon Web Services
Sundar Raghavan – Skytap
Josh Wieder – Atlantic.net
Margaret Dawson – Hubspan
Patrick Escarcega – “Managing Fear – Transitioning to the Cloud
7:30pm Unpanel
8:00pm Begin Unconference (organize the unconference)
8:15pm Unconference Session 1
9:00pm Unconference Session 2
9:45pm Wrap-up Session
10:00pm Raffle Books: “Host your website in the cloud” by Jeff Barr
10:15pm Drinks at 13coins sponsored by Clear Wireless Internet

NW Cloud
NW Cloud

Local Organizers:
– Jon Madamba of http://www.sawsug.com
– Shy Cohen
– Krish Subramanian of Krishworld
– Adron Hall (Me)
– Dave Nielsen of CloudCamp

Seattle #altnet

Just a few of the key points brought up during the #altnet meeting on Saturday this weekend.  There were a number of other topics, but these stuck in my mind as something I am more interested in.

  • katas | How to transition the learning from katas into the more elaborate testing realm of fakes, mocks, stubs, and such.
  • Smells |  ViewModels, testing WPF and Silverlight.  How to test for latency,
  • Upfront versus down the road costs.  How to decide when something should be learned at a macro level.
  • UI Testing | What is a good method or practice to use to keep the testing time to a minimum.

These four points bring me to my current story list of code to write.

  • Knock out a kata or two, and elaborate on the katas so that they have a more real world use for Enterprise (and other) Developers that have lots of abstracted layers and other parts to move through.
  • I really need to get back to my Silverlight and WPF skills.  Somehow I need to bring these skills into my daily Azure Cloud work, which should be relatively easy, I just have to do it.
  • Not sure I will have time, but I would like to write up some cost analysis (not just $,  but in time, effort, and other costs) associated with certain up front design and up front testing versus testing or design after the fact.  Of course this entire discussion point is very relative, but I am sure I can dig up some information somewhere.
  • UI Testing.  It was an interesting topic at ALT.NET, but doubtful I will touch on it much until I get more dedicated WPF/Silverlight/Web UI Work.  Right now there just isn’t enough value it it for me (kind of based on the aforementioned topic).

#altnetseattle in Closing

So again, the #altnetseattle Conference easily was one of the most useful events of the year for me.  The amount of ideas, thoughts, and conversations that happen in just those two days often outweigh all the presentations I see at other conferences throughout the year.  The reason is simple, they are directed, to the point, and done with the ideal of open spaces.  This makes each session exhaustive on a particular topics.  Throw together some of the smartest people in the field and you have a bang up awesome energy and conversation.

I got to talk about cloud computer, a little bit, and REST Architecture as sessions I kicked off myself.  Those were a blast.  I also got to meet a ton of other super talented like minded developers and engineers that are out there kicking the tires of .NET (and other languages/tech stacks like Ruby on Rails).

Overall the conference rocked and I will definitely be coming back!  With that, I am headed home to Portland.