Recap: CMAP Code Camp Fall 2010

This was my first trip to CMAP Code Camp, and I'm very glad I had the opportunity to attend and speak. The weather was cold, dark and gloomy driving across Pennsylvania, but as soon as I hit the Maryland border (also the Mason-Dixon line), the skies cleared and there was a rainbow. It was so beautiful, what could it mean? For the attendees, it meant a large pot of swag and content. There were over 150 people participating, and this was the first Code Camp for what seemed to be 2/3 of the attendees in a show-of-hands poll. It was standing room only for the opening and closing sessions.

There was a good cross-section of talks. Besides a number of talks on Windows Phone 7 and Azure, Linq, Entity Framework, PHP, jQuery, Mercurial and TFS also had talks dedicated to them. I had the chance to learn about CakePHP, an MVC framework for PHP that looks really cool. I'm excited to download that and give it a try. And, even though I've co-authored a book on Azure, I learned a few new tips and tricks from Dave Makogon, who was fresh from PDC 10.

Andrew Duthie recorded a number of segments for the Community Megaphone Podcast. I was part of a session with David Makogon on Azure, and later with Dani Diaz on Windows Phone 7. You can see Andrew recording with Jim Pendarvis, Ed Mullin and Randy Hayes about Southern Maryland Give Camp. Apparently, if 100 devs take part in SOMDGC, Andrew will shave his head into a mohawk, and if 150 devs participate, he'll either dye it or get a henna tattoo. If helping a group of deserving non-profits isn't enough, Andrew with a colored mohawk should be the icing on that cake.

Congratulations to all the winners of prizes, but especially Steven Stewart, who won our Studio Enterprise! Steven and I had a nice chat during the camp and again at the post-event gathering. He's very right that the quality of code camps, in terms of content and speaker quality, has improved over the years. I completely agree, I attribute that to code camps providing a venue for people to participate and build those skills. The quality was definitely on display this past weekend.

It was great to catch up again with Andrew Duthie, Dani Diaz, Kendall Miller, Dave Makogon and Dave Hoerster, and it was great to meet Chris Steen, Randy Hayes, Jim Brooks, Hemant Singh, Jim Pendarvis, Ed Mullin and Greg Wenograd. For anyone who can't read my horrible handwriting on my fake business cards, you'll be happy to know my new cards arrived today. With a lot of space on the back for my horrible handwriting.