Events

Dogfood II is Done!

James Bender — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:46:15 GMT

Thanks to all who came to my talk on F# at the Dogfood conference last week. I had a great time presenting it and hope all who attended enjoyed it as well. The slide deck and demo are attached. If anybody has any questions about it, please feel free to contact me.

This was my first Dogfood conference, and it was unlike any other event I’ve been to. I was able to meet a lot of people who don’t normally come to developer events or user group meetings.

On a related note, The Sophic Group will be holding an F# boot camp on December 14-15 at OCLC in Dublin OH. The cost is $1900 and includes two days of instruction, all class materials and a half-day of on-site (meaning your office) continuing F# education and assessment. If this sounds interesting, please contact me for details.

Next stop, PDC in Los Angeles. See you there!

Getting Started with WCF Slides and Code Sample from CINNUG

James Bender — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:17:50 GMT

Better late than never…

Seriously, sorry to everyone who’s been waiting for these.

I had a great time speaking in Cincinnati last week and meet a lot of great people. I hope to see you all again soon.

2009 Columbus Give Camp is in the books…

James Bender — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:50:54 GMT

… and it was a tremendous experience!

The goal of a Give Camp is to unite non-profits that need technical assistance, be it a new web site, help with a CRM or making changes to an existing line of business application with passionate geeks in the area who are willing to give a weekend to help these non-profits accomplish their goals.

This year, in Columbus, about 45 software professionals came together to help eight non-profits. The results were amazing. In about 48 hours, eight full scale applications were either completed, or nearly completed. Most starting from scratch. It was great to see the variety of technologies and talents in one place and one time. It was also great to see the results a small but committed team of developers could create in a short period of time. Truly amazing! I want to thank all the volunteers who came out to help. A weekend can be a big thing to give up, and the Give Camp organizers and non-profits are extremely thankful of your efforts.

I would also like to thank all the non-profits that participated. We had a great time getting together and learning from each other while helping you.

I would also like to thank our sponsors. Quick Solutions for providing us with a great workspace, and soda and coffee through the weekend. Discount ASP.NET for providing hosting for the non-profit applications. Tech Smith for providing funds and licenses of their amazing products. Telerik provided us with licenses for some of their products and swag. Microsoft for providing funds and swag. eRubycon for providing a free pass to eRubycon 2009. And The Sophic Group for sponsoring dinner on Saturday night. Please remember the support these sponsors provided.

I would like to single out two sponsors who went above and beyond for us: Potbelly and Pei Wei. One of the most difficult things about organizing an event that lasts all day is feeding people. When that even spans multiple days AND encourages participants to stay over-night, that task is even harder. Potbelly and Pei Wei made some of those meals a whole lot easier for us! Please remember them if you’re in the Polaris area at lunch or dinner time (Potbelly is here, Pei Wei is here)

See you all at Give Camp 2010!

I’m Following Rod Paddock at Codestock?!

James Bender — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:46:07 GMT

Codestock is this weekend in Knoxville. You can check out the agenda page here and see that there are some great, very smart people speaking there. With seven tracks over two days, plus open spaces, there’s something for everyone at this great event. I was honored to speak at the first Codestock event last year, and I’m thrilled to be back!

I’ll be presenting “How to make your application awesome with JSON, REST and WCF” in which I’ll explain why REST is the “new” hotness (turns out it’s not that new) and how to take advantage of it with WCF. You’ll also get to see some cool JQuery and ASP.NET MVC stuff as part of the talk. It’s the first time I’ve given this talk, so I’m very excited!

Turns out I’m following Rod Paddock. Yeah, that Rod Paddock. Editor in Chief of CoDe Magazine, author of many books, international speaker and Microsoft MVP. By contrast, I was all excited this morning because I found a $5.00 bill in my pocket that I forgot I had.

Ron Paddock followed by James Bender. Kinda like…

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In all seriousness, I’m really looking forward and VERY happy to be speaking at Codestock. It’s a must-attend event and if you’re not going, well, you should go!

Camping without the insects!

James Bender — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:31:23 GMT

Notice I didn’t say “bugs” though….

The Columbus Give Camp is July 17-19 and will be held at the Quick Solutions office

.What is a “Give Camp?”

The goal of the Give Camp is to pair charities that have technology based needs with people from the development community who are willing to donate their time and help those charities out. We will start on Friday the 17th, and work STRAIGHT THROUGH (OK, you don’t have to stay overnight if you can’t) until Sunday to do our best to provide the charity with what they need.

We are looking for both volunteers and charities. If you are interested, or know someone (volunteer or charity) that might be interested, please visit the Give Camp website and register.

Indy Code Camp Recap

James Bender — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:57:59 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended my talk on custom WCF behaviors at the Indy Code Camp. I hope you all found the topic interesting and the content useful.

You can get the slides and code samples here:

For those who might be interested, I’ll be presenting an Intro to WCF talk at Cincinnati .NET Users Group in the future. More information will be posted here in the future.

If I Do A Good Job, Can We Go To Dietsch Brothers for Ice Cream After The Meeting?

James Bender — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:28:20 GMT

This Tuesday, April 28th, I’ll be speaking at the Findlay Area .NET User Group.

I’ll be presenting “How I Learned To Love Dependency Injection,” which if my .NET Kicks stats are to be believed, is turning out to be quite the popular talk. The meeting is at the Marathon Oil building in downtown Findlay.

I spoke at this group a couple of years ago and had a GREAT time. I’m excited to be going back!

Kalamazoo X Conference re-cap and Slides

James Bender — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:25:48 GMT

I had a GREAT time yesterday speaking at and attending the Kalamazoo X Conference!

Thanks and congratulations to Mike Eaton and the all the organizers and staff for creating, organizing and hosting this one-of-a-kind event. All the talks were great, but I want to especially single-out two that I thought we absolutely incredible:

Leon Gersing gave an awesome talk on “Change.” I've always thought Leon was a great, natural speaking and finding out that he actually studied musical theater in college explains where a lot of that comes from. He had some great insight and great advice for everyone there on dealing with change.

Jim Holmes gave two talks that were both great. But his talk on “Leadership” was just incredible. This talk should be “required reading” for anyone who is or wants to get into management.

If you are at an event in the future and you see either of these sessions on the schedule, go. I don’t care what else is on the schedule for that time, blow it off and go to these.

I enjoyed speaking to the group on Organization Dynamics. Unfortunately I had to use the “abridged” deck, but I think I got all the important points out. The full deck can downloaded here:

See you next year in Kalamazoo!

How I Learned to Love Dependency Injection: The Slides

James Bender — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:46:27 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended the Central Ohio Day of .NET yesterday and made it such a success. A special thanks to all the organizers as well.

I had a great time seeing some old friends a making some new ones. I hope to see you all at events down the road.

I hope those who attended my session on DI enjoyed it and found it useful. As promised, I'm posting my slides.

Right now I'm using a borrowed laptop, so I don't have access to the sample code, but I'll be putting that up as soon as possible.

See you all at the next event!

Kalamazoo!

James Bender — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:57:37 GMT

Ready for a different type of conference?

Then the Kalamazoo X Conference is for you!

Unlike your normal Code Camps and Days of .NET, this conference will focus on:

Human interaction, including social, personal, and career development
Interface and graphic design
Development process and best practices
Requirements analysis, architecture, design and modeling.

In addition to a lot of smart people, I’ll be there speaking on “Organizational Dynamics.”

See you all there!