Skip to main content

CodeMash: Day 1

I'm so impressed with the organizers of this conference. In some ways, the "grass roots" effort exceeded the effectiveness of "professionally" organized conferences. Some of the highlights:
  • Bruce Eckle - Listen to him speak if you get the chance. Abstract but a good message: we must experiment to learn; your assumptions are probably wrong; designing up front will likely miss the mark
  • Ted Neward - I love it when people break through the religion and the BS to tell it like it is. Ted discussed embracing both Java and .Net to create the best solution to a business problem.
  • Pillar programming problem contest - I spent about an hour trying to figure this one out on a spreadsheet and failed miserably. ;-) (I think I'm missing some constraints...) Regardless, it was a fun exercise and likely, a great way to attract solid developer candidates.
  • Video games - I've never been a gamer but I find the innovation intriguing. The Wii over at Quick Solutions seems to be the biggest draw. XBox 360 at Microsoft was a close 2nd.
  • Booth babes at Compuware - Enough said. (Note to Compuware: guys, this just won't yield candidates...we're not that shallow)
  • Free pop - I don't drink pop but a lot of developers do. Props to Pillar for dropping $1000 on pop Thursday
  • Open Spaces - A concept from Bruce Eckle and Martin Fowler for informal, engaging gatherings to experience ____ (fill in the blank). A neat idea.
  • Wireless access (free!)
Overall, day 1 was great. I learned a lot and experienced some coming technologies as well as some topics outside my normal realm. Good work, guys.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Certified or Certifiable?

As a senior technology professional, I interview a lot of candidates. I also maintain solid relationships with other folks in the community. Frequently, the topic of certifications arises: A good investment? Valuable? A clear measurement of skill? Consensus appears to draw the line related to one's seniority. If you're (for example) just out of school and looking for an instant creditability boost, by all means pursue a certification. Likely, this credential will assist you in overcoming the "junior" tag and likely land you more interviews and client roles. (Note: I'm going to use the terms senior and junior here...no offense to either. Can't think of a better one word description. I was a junior once too.) In stark contrast, the value of certifications drops off the table around the 2-3 year mark. Some in my circles even perceive certifications as a negative for the senior professional. They think, "If this guy is so solid, why is he wasting valuable...
5 comments
Read more

Hero Write-up: Now this is Customer Service!

My best friend Scott is president/C-everything of a small northeastern Ohio manufacturing concern, KirkKey Interlock . I hadn't spoken with him for a while and wanted to see how Canton fared with the Blizzard of '08 (that's what they're calling it...not me). I say, "So what's new?" He replies that on Tuesday his primary server (which essentially runs the business) came up with lame with not one, but [a statistically improbable] *two* physical disk failures on a RAID5 hardware array. My friend attempts the fix but gives up pretty quickly after seeing some Linux nasty-grams on the boot screen. His service provider is an old college buddy who lives down in Raleigh, Cerient Technologies led by Jason Tower . Scott couldn't email out because Exchange was on the toasted server. Being creative, Scott started Treo-emailing photos of the screen. Unfortunately, Jason couldn't receive email because a storm had knocked out a lot of local hosting. [Sigh] After...
4 comments
Read more

TFS Reports Out of Date

You may have noticed it takes a while for Team Foundation Server (TFS) reports to reflect changes you've made to work items or builds. Let me guess...about an hour, right? Out of the box, TFS is set to refresh the data warehouse from its transactional store every 60 minutes. How do I change the frequency of the data warehouse refresh? Browse to the TFS Controller Web Service on your TFS application tier server within IE at: http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx Select the ChangeSetting option Enter RunIntervalSeconds for the settingId and the desired number of seconds for newValue (300 for 5 minutes...5*60) Select Invoke How do I force a data warehouse refresh? Two methods here: either via the above web service or using SQL Server Management Studio. Via the web service: Browse to the TFS Controller Web Service within IE at: http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx Select the Run option Click Invo...
6 comments
Read more