The Austin .Net User Group conducted its third annual Austin Code Camp on May 17, 2008. Eric Hexter and John Teague did a great job heading up the effort to put on this weekend conference. Attendance was around 203, and St. Edward’s PEC graciously hosted again. Those facilities are great!!
I was returning from the DevTeach conference in Toronto, so I had to miss. Very unfortunate. I was able to vicariously experience it through reading second-hand reports from some of the attendees.
Peter Seale provided some encouragement that the focus of the Austin .Net User Group is on the right track with his report of the code camp.
“The code camp did not feature an “Introduction to Silverlight” session. This is the simple, effective test by which I will measure all future conferences: is there an intro to Silverlight session. If there is, then good chances are most of the sessions will be useless. Further down the road, change out “Silverlight” with whatever new UI framework/data grid/designer tool that is “up to two years away from release.” I’m officially tired of these type of talks, 4 LIFE. Call me back when you’re running a “Best Practices in Silverlight Smackdown.”
The code camp was heavy on OO principles. This is a good thing; between “patterns cage match” and “IoC jumpstart” and “OO design” and “mocks and stubs”, my brain was assaulted by lots of OO. Which is good, I haven’t gotten this much in the 3+ years of involvement with Houston user groups and events. Not to gripe on my home city, let’s stay positive etc.”
Others have also provided thier thoughts about the conference: