Wow…my last post was on August 18th!

On September 27th, I took the train to Chicago so I could start a short-term (1-month) Silverlight gig in Chicago on Monday. After 3 intense days with the project team, I came back home Wednesday night so I could see my family before heading out for the Richmond Code Camp. I left home around 7am Friday morning, stopped in Columbus, OH around 11am to pick up James Bender and then after another 7 1/2 hours, we arrived at our hotel in Richmond. I’m currently sitting in the final session at the Camp after presenting two successful sessions (ActiveRecord and Software Estimation) earlier in the day. This has been a great event — Kevin and crew have done an outstanding job.

We’re going to leave early Sunday morning for the long-ass drive back to Columbus and then on to Michigan. I’ll be catching the early train back to Chicago Monday morning so I can spend the entire week in the city. I’ll be home Friday night for 2 days, then back, to Chicago for 4 days. I’ll be heading to Cincinnati on October 15th/16th 16th/17th (with my family) for the MVC.NET Firestarter event. I’m looking forward to the event because I really haven’t done any web development for close to two years and I think this will be a great re-introduction. We’ll head back home so I can catch the train back to Chicago on the 17th 18th. The final day of the gig is the 23rd. Did I mention my birthday is on the 21st?

Anyway, life has been crazy. I’m already looking forward to getting back to my normal schedule.

(Updated at 10:01pm on 10/2/2009 – updated dates after Matt nicely corrected me in the comments)

It’s been just over a month since the event.  I’ve tried to write this post many times, but I haven’t been able to put into words just how cool the event was.  It was a physically and emotionally exhausting weekend.  It was also incredibly satisfying.  I met some amazing people, had some great conversations and came away from the event inspired.  At one point during the event, I sat down with Dave Giard for one of his “Technology and Friends” interviews.  Dave also did a great job of summarizing that talk as well as the camp itself in this post.

Running an event like this was extremely challenging, but the planning team I pulled together did an outstanding job.  Things ran very smoothly and I’m so grateful for the dedication people like Todd Bohlen and his wife showed to make sure everyone had food and drinks for the entire weekend.  There was some drama over the weekend as we realized we had some team assignment issues, but quick meetings and developers who wanted to help solved those pretty quickly. 

Patrick Steele put together this awesome video of the event.

While it took me a few days to recover, I am looking forward to the event next year.

Central Ohio

On June 23, 24 and 25th, I had the opportunity to speak at the Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus .NET user groups on Software Estimation.  This is a topic that is rarely talked about so I’ve been on a mission to get developers thinking about it.  Over the course of 3 days, 117 people heard me talk about the importance of estimation.  Hopefully those people will start doing what they can to improve their own estimates and get their employers to realize how ineffective our current methods are.  I have a good time giving that talk and it’s one I hope to continue giving at user groups.

I want to thank the user group leaders for having me.  The leaders of these groups are not only people I look up to and admire in the community, but good friends as well.  The members of the groups were all very engaged in the topic and asked a lot of great questions, many of which are being incorporated into the talk.

I really enjoyed the trip because I got to hang out and talk to a lot of friends I don’t get to see very often.  I have to thank Dan Hounshell for opening his house to me a *second* time this month (the first was for the ORM Firestarter on June 13).  Without friends like Dan, trips like this would be a lot tougher to justify due to the cost of hotels for multiple nights. 

On Tuesday, I spoke at the Cincinnati user group.  There were about 40 people in the audience.  I was a bit nervous because I hadn’t given the talk since the Indy Code Camp in May.  After my talk, I demoed Zen for those that were interested (I’ll be writing a post or two about Zen in the coming days).  A bunch of us went out for drinks afterwards.  It really was nice to sit outside, have a drink or two, relax and chat about anything and everything.

During the day on Wednesday, I hung out at a Panera not too far from Wright State University.  I managed to get a little work done on my presentation during the day and before I knew it, it was time to head to the venue.  The Dayton group was a bit smaller with only 17 attendees, but just as engaged.  After the event, Justin Kohnen and I hit up the nearby BW3 and talked about life as an independent consultant until midnight.  Good times.

On Thursday the 25th, Joe invited me to come hang out at the EdgeCase office in Columbus.  While I was a stranger to most, Joe made me feel at home.  I tried to keep out of the way while I was there, but I have to say, I really enjoyed listening to all the collaboration that took place while I was there.  It was an environment I haven’t experienced before and honestly, it made me realize how much I’m missing as an independent consultant.  Joe and I had a great conversation at the end of the day before I headed to the user group meeting.  In fact, I was so engaged in the conversation with Joe that I didn’t leave the EdgeCase office until 5:30 and the user group meeting started at 6!  Once I hit the parking lot they call I71, I called Jeff to tell him I’d probably be late to the user group.    Thankfully he told me NOT to get off on Polaris Pkwy and instead head to the next exit.  Good call!  I ended up walking through the door just after 6. 

Columbus was by far the largest group I talked to with 60 people in attendance.  As with Cinci and Dayton, the group was very engaged and had a lot of great questions.  After the group, a bunch of us went out for dinner and drinks at Hoggy’s.  We started out on the patio, but we were eventually forced inside due to a storm that rolled through.  It was a great time with lots of jokes made at each other’s expense.

I stayed Thursday night at Bender’s house bachelor pad.   We talked about music for a bit and finally headed to bed around midnight.

CodeStock

We were up bright and early Friday morning for our 5+ hour drive to Knoxville for CodeStock.  It was great to talk to James completely unfiltered during the drive.  By the time we hit Knoxville, we were laughing our asses off, mostly at the expense of those living south of Cinci.

My “Developing Solid WPF Applications” was scheduled for 2:20 on Friday, so by the time we arrived at 1pm, I had enough time to say hi to a few people and make sure my demos were working before giving the talk to a FULL room.  By full, I mean I had a few people sitting on the floor in the front of the room.   I’m my biggest critic, so I know that a few things went wrong during the session, but I got some good / positive feedback right after the session ended.  I ended up hanging out for the rest of the day with Alan and a bunch of other speakers (too many to list).

On Saturday, I sat in Leon’s AWESOME Ruby Koans session.  I’ve been making my way through the Koans, so it was great to sit down and show Leon where I was and get some feedback.  After that session, Leon, Tim Wingfield, Dean Weber and I went to lunch and then came back to the end of Mike Wood’s excellent “Be a Better Developer” session.  That was followed by an open space on the same subject.  Good times.   After the closing circle, a bunch of us headed to the Chop House for dinner before heading to the major after-party at Alan’s house.

I can’t express enough how awesome it was to see all my friends again, but after 5 days, it was nice to be home again.

Thanks again to the user group leaders for allowing me to speak to their groups.  Thanks to the speaker selection team for CodeStock for selecting me and finally, thanks for all the attendees who sat through my talks.  

In less than 2 weeks, the 2nd Annual Michigan Give Camp in Ann Arbor will be upon us.  It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since the first Give Camp in Ann Arbor!  When I talk to people about Give Camp, here is what I normally tell them:

“In the 15 years that I’ve been a software developer, the first Ann Arbor Give Camp was the most physically and emotionally exhausting weekend of my life, but absolutely the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done related to software development.”

If you’re a developer of any level, a designer, DBA or PM and want to help out some great charities, head over to the registration site and sign up.  If you’re involved with a non-profit organization in the state of Michigan and want to send us a proposal, there’s still time to submit.  Check out this post on the Michigan Give Camp website for more information.  You can also follow us on twitter.  If you have any questions at all about participating in the Give Camp (either as a developer or a nonprofit), email info@MichiganGivecamp.org.  If you’re interested in sponsoring the Michigan Give Camp, contact sponsors@MichiganGiveCamp.org.

If you’re in Ohio, a Give Camp is planned for the same weekend in Columbus.  Head over to their site and sign up.  If you’re interested in sponsoring the Columbus Give Camp, check out their Sponsors page.  If you’re in Knoxville, TN, several developers have already committed to holding a satellite Give Camp.  Contact Nate Blevins if you’re interested.

On July 1st around 11:30, I received an email with the subject of “Congratulations 2009 Microsoft MVP!”  To say I was stunned would be putting it lightly.   Over the past few days, a number of my friends have announced that they were not being renewed as MVPs, so honestly the closer it got to July 1st, the more I convinced myself that I wouldn’t be one of those receiving the award this quarter. 

For my friends that don’t know about the MVP Program, here’s a snippet from the email I received:

“This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others.”

As I said, I was pretty shocked when that email arrived in my inbox.  What’s really cool is that around the same time, my friend Nate received the same email.   I was also pleased to find out my friend John Stockton (no, not the basketball player) also received the award.

I gotta thank a few people because as cheesy as it sounds, I couldn’t have done it alone.

The first person I need to thank is Dustin Campbell.  After I complained on a mailing list about how I was too far from user groups to attend / speak, Dustin approached me at Codemash 2008 and said (his exact words), “Dude, don’t be a p****.  Get out there and speak.”  Keep in mind that at the time, Dustin was kind of a big deal around Heartland, so who was I to argue.   Anyway, Dustin, thanks for motivating me to get off my ass and into the community.

Over the past couple of years, Josh Holmes has gone from being “that guy from Microsoft” to a close friend and mentor.  He has been a guiding force in my development in the community since my first user group talk in Toledo in February 2008.  Josh, thanks for being there.

Jim Holmes and Mike Wood have both been inspirations and without leaders like them in the community, I probably would have stopped being so involved a long time ago.

Nate, James, Jayme, Sean and Dave have helped keep me grounded during my speaking “tours” and making me realize how important it is to “do something”, not just talk.

Thanks to the Microsoft evangelists (Jeff, Jennifer and Brian) in my region for being such great supporters of our dev community.

Big thanks to my family for being so supportive while I traveled all over to attend / speak at some really cool events.

There are so many others, but I know I’ll forget someone, so we’ll leave it at this: thanks everyone.

This coming Saturday, I’ll be at the Chicago Code Camp in Grayslake, IL.  I’ll be presenting two sessions:

- Developing Solid WPF Applications (ugh.  Fingers crossed this talk goes as expected this time)
- An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or How to stop writing CRUD

I’ve given the WPF talk a couple of times this year and both were plagued with issues.  I’m really hoping to nail it this time.  As for the ActiveRecord talk, I gave it about a dozen times last year, so I foresee no problems at all and am looking forward to giving it again.

While I love all of our cool Heartland events, one of my big motivations for going to the Chicago Code Camp this year is to meet and hang out with new people.

If you don’t have any other plans for the 30th and are somewhat close to Chicago, there is still time to sign up!

Justin has started a series of posts on tips for giving technical presentations, so I want to throw my hat in the ring and give a tip that will help all of us do better in our presentations.

The Past

I’m terrible at not fully preparing for talks and it has definitely shown.  I’m not proud of my WPF talks at the recent Central Ohio Day of .NET, Stir Trek and the Indy Code Camp.  I struggled with content at Central Ohio and with other problems coming up during the talks at the other events.  I never gave any thought to what would happen if hardware failed or if I forgot some important piece of code.  The ratings for those talks were justifiably low because I *did* run into hardware problems and I did forget important code.  I was NOT prepared.  Ugh.

At Central Ohio, I made a change to my WPF talk the night before the session, but never ran through it before actually giving it in front of an audience.  HUGE mistake.  At Stir Trek, I spent more time worrying about how to get the damn HP TouchSmart to display on the projector than I did on what I was actually going to say.  HUGE MISTAKE.  At the Indy Code Camp, I discovered DURING the presentation that I copied the WRONG virtual machines to my laptop so I didn’t have the correct code.   HUGE MISTAKE.  I ended up having to remote into my home development VM and demo from that.  Ugh. 

A Revelation

I gave two talks at the Indy Code Camp.  One was very successful, one was a failure.  During the day, I spent some time talking to Mike Wood.  Mike is not only a friend, but a fantastic speaker, so I opened up to him on how poorly my WPF talk went versus how my Software Estimation talk went. 

Because my Software Estimation talk was new, I spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks on it.  In fact, I did something I have NEVER done with one of my talks before: I rehearsed it.  Let’s be clear on what I’m talking about – I stood in my office, alone, and gave the Software Estimation talk to an empty room.  I didn’t stop.  If I ran into a slide with no notes (I was using Presentation View), I forced myself to say something.  This was a HUGE WIN because I realized BEFORE the live presentation that I only had 45 minutes of material for a 75 minute session!  It was also a HUGE WIN because once I was in front of the audience I *knew* what I was going to say!

During my conversation with Mike, he said he does that for every one of his talks!  You know what?  It shows.  It shows when he’s in front of an audience and it shows in his speaker evaluations.  I will admit though that standing up in my office felt strange.  It felt strange talking to no one.  It also felt very satisfying!

A Promise

I will NEVER do another presentation without first running through it out loud in the comfort of my home/office.  I will do this multiple times if possible. 

Sarah’s Pictures
Alan’s Pictures
Dave’s Pictures

On Saturday, April 25, the first Kalamazoo X Conference was held at the Anna Whitten Hall in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I can only describe the day as a huge success.  It exceeded my expectations in every way.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday than watching 13 of my friends give some of the best talks I’ve ever seen.  The speakers KICKED ASS!  I have come away from this event energized and ready to tackle anything. 

The energy of the day was incredible.  As the MC of the event, I had the chance to do something I’ve been looking forward to since    we changed the format to a single track: introduce the speakers – my friends – to the audience.  I actually didn’t prepare any of the introductions ahead of time, instead coming up with stuff on the fly.  Whether that was the best decision is another story.  

While I enjoyed every talk, there were some definite standouts.

Soft Skills in 25 Minutes

It was very cool to see Brian boil his 2+ hour “Soft Skills” talk down to 20 minutes.  When I first created the schedule for the single-track event, I gave Brian 2 back-to-back slots because I knew this particular talk could go long.  Brian told me he really wanted to stick with the short format like everyone else, so I cut him back to the single slot.  I was very surprised when he ended a couple minutes early! 

I am Ammal!

Dave’s “Effective Communication” talk was good if for no other reason than I am/was “Ammal”.   What really sucked is that because of the sun, most of Dave’s slides were washed out and you couldn’t really see the pictures.

A Scary Black Man

Clovis did an outstanding job with his “Branding 101” talk.  There were some technical difficulties at the last minute, so he did his entire talk without slides.  He actively engaged the audience and held a very entertaining conversation.  At one point, he jokingly described himself as the “scary black man”.  Good stuff.  It was one of the few talks I wish could have gone on for another hour.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Josh’s “Lost Art of Simplicity” was a bit more polished than when he did it at the Central Ohio Day of .NET.  His pacing was dead-on and the graphics he used in his presentation were very, very cool.

Stepping up

I have to point out that about halfway through Andy Van Solkema’s talk, I realized that I wasn’t sure if Brian knew he was supposed to do the “What is an Architect” talk.   He and I had talked about it early on in the X Conference planning, but somehow it fell off the radar.  Immediately after Andy’s talk, I mentioned it to him.  He said he was wondering who was going to do it, but luckily he jumped at the chance to get back in front of the audience.  Instead of doing “What is an architect”, he decided to do his “5 Ways to be more Agile” talk.  It was a great decision!

Without change, there would be no butterflies

I have to say, the standout session for me was Leon’s “Change”.  This talk was EXACTLY why I wanted Leon at the conference.  It was a very powerful, personal talk given in Leon’s engaging, comedic style.  He ended his talk with an amazing quote by Deming: “It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory”.  Wow.

A Community Leader on Leadership

Jim’s “Leadership 101” talk started out in a very intense way as he described how soldiers in World War I went “over the top” of the trenches into almost certain death.  He talked about why they did what they did and then transitioned into a short, but amazing talk about leadership.  When I first asked Jim to speak and he pitched this particular talk, I jumped at it.  In my opinion, there is NO ONE in the development community I’d rather have talk about leadership.

Community

A few weeks before the event, I asked Mike to do a talk on Community knowing he’d kick ass.  The talk that capped off the day almost had me in tears because it was THE PERFECT ending for the day.  Mike Wood did an awesome job explaining what community meant to him.  His final slide (which stayed up during our short group conversation) asked the very simple question, “What does community mean to you?”  Good stuff.

Thanks

I have to thank all of the speakers for making this such a great event.  Without their willingness to travel (some drove several hundred miles) to this small first time conference, seemingly out in the sticks, we would have not been able to pull this off.

Thanks to all our great sponsors for providing monetary support and giving us all sorts of great stuff to give away.  Thanks to the others on the planning team who helped make this event the success it was. 

Will there be a Kalamazoo X Conference in 2010?  Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, it’s almost certainly YES.

* Pictures by Dave Giard, Sarah Dutkiewicz and Alan Barber used with permission.

To those that attended my talk at the Central Ohio Day of .NET on the 18th: I apologize.  It was not meant to be a “tool” talk.  At the last minute, I decided to change the order of my slides hoping a *short* discussion of tools would help when I got to the “meat” of the talk.  BIG MISTAKE.  It really changed the whole tone and direction of my talk, especially since I got a late start due to projector issues.

I am re-working the talk for the Indy Code Camp so it is what I intended it to be: a session heavy on architectural guidance.

This coming Friday I’ll be heading down to Wilmington, Ohio for the Central Ohio Day of .NET on Saturday.  This was one of the first events in the region when it started out as the Dayton-Cinci Code Camp a few years ago.  I always look forward to it and this year is no different.  The session lineup looks pretty damn good, even with mine included.   Yes, I will be presenting at this years event on “Developing Solid WPF Applications”.

I’ve been on the planning team for the Kalamazoo X Conference (register here) since late last year, so when I head to Kalamazoo on April 25th, I’ll be looking forward to listening to all the amazing speakers we have lined up.  Since we changed the format of the event to a single track, attendees and staff will be able to see every session!  Good stuff.

May is a busy month for me, both personally and professionally.  Between my anniversary (12th), my wife’s birthday and Mother’s Day, the month would be busy enough, but on top of that, I’ll be heading to Columbus on Friday, May 8th to present on “What’s New in WPF 4.0” at Stir Trek.  This will be a very cool event, especially if you’re a Star Trek fan because there will be a private screening of the new Star Trek movie at 4PM for all attendees.  To be perfectly honest, I’ll probably be leaving at 4 because I haven’t been able to sit through a Star Trek movie since Wrath of Khan (the best of the movies).

On May 16th, I’ll be at the Indy Code Camp in Indianapolis.  For the second year running, I’ll be presenting two sessions: “Writing Solid WPF Applications” and “Improving our Craft: A Discussion on Software Estimation”.

On May 30th, I hope to be at the Chicago Code Camp whether I’m speaking or not.  I did submit some abstracts, but haven’t heard back yet.