Philly .NET Code Camp 2011.1 from the eyes of a sponsor

Last weekend, I traveled to Philadelphia to exhibit GrapeCity Powertools at the first of 2 Philly Code Camps for 2011. Before the code camp even started, I was making travel arrangements and found it cheaper to fly into Allentown, PA than Pennsylvania, PA. I found code camp to be 30 miles north of the Philadelphia airport and 50 miles south of the Allentown airport. Let me tell you the experience at ABE was much better than any experience I had at PHL, so I am glad I made the decision to try this out. Getting in and out of ABE and traveling the country roads around were very pleasant, even on the cold and rainy Friday afternoon that I landed.

After a great evening, where I spent most of the time working with a potential customer through email, the sun came out Saturday morning. Setup at Devry University was 7:00 and people were already arriving to register, even though that was not to open until 7:30. After a while, it became very evident why they were doing this. 675 attendees had come to learn from the ~65 great sessions that were planned for the day. And best yet, it was a FREE event.

The Philly Code Camp is one event that I am glad GrapeCity PowerTools has made a decision to sponsor. Not only was there a great number of attendees and a great lineup of learning in the .NET technologies, but there was also developer all-stars in attendance. Among them were Dani Diaz, Miguel Castro, Rachel Appel, and Chris Love. And what would ANY event be without great food. Event organizers, including Bill Wolfe and Andy Schwam, did not disappoint here. There was plenty of bagels, coffee and juice for breakfast, hoagies, salad, cookies and soda for lunch. And a big surprise for any first timers was the popcorn machine and large pretzels for snack. One more step that the Philly Code Camp goes that really impresses me was Alex’s Lemonade Stand. They were allowed to come in and sell cups of lemonade to raise money to fight childhood cancer. Nothing but first class throughout everything done at Philly .NET Code Camp.

My reason for being there was to meet, mingle and evangelize GrapeCity Powertools with as many as possible. There are many people who have heard of ActiveReports or Spread, but not GrapeCity, so making this connection is a must for our branding right now. But also listening to people and finding out what they are looking for is another very high priority. One thing to hear that as interesting is a lot were looking for tools for SharePoint, especially tools to replace Excel Services. Another great thing to hear is they are looking for tools to replace Sql Server Reporting Services. So I was able to talk with many people and show demos to many about our products.

All in all, the event was very good. A big thank you to the whole Philly .NET team and their hard work putting together another successful event. We look forward to seeing you again in October.

Scott Shorter
GrapeCity PowerTools