Recap: Utah Code Camp

Utah Code Camp Spring 2011 is a wrap, and what a great weekend it was! One of the really cool things about this code camp is how talks are selected—speakers submit topics to the camp’s website, and registrants vote on which ones they’d like to see. The voting doesn’t determine talks 100%, but plays a very strong role in a talk’s selection. Another nice aspect of UTCC is the emphasis on speakers providing session materials. Most of the session materials are now online at the code camp’s site (mine and Steve’s are).

The weekend kicked off with a fun speaker dinner at Fuddrucker’s, and it was quickly evident both how close the Utah community is, and how welcoming they are to a pair of outsiders from Pittsburgh. There was a tremendous amount of laughter throughout dinner, and that carried over to the next day’s events. The organizers put an emphasis on a wide cross-section of technologies, and there were talks on HTML 5, Erlang, Azure, jQuery, Android, WP7, Scrum, SQL Server and more. It was a great selection, and devs with a wide range of interests came together. There was some good natured ribbing about the platform of choice, but it was a very positive environment throughout.

Utah Code Camp was held in conjunction with a Podcamp at Neumont University, which like everything in the area, has spectacular views of the mountains. This fall’s Code Camp will be held in conjunction with a SQL Saturday, making a great day of technical content (I’m looking forward to that return trip).

We appreciate everyone who attended our talks, and we hope you found them interesting. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to email us or leave comments here. I was glad to be able to see Nate Zaugg speak on HTML 5, and Mike Erickson on Azure Diagnostics—I learned from each of you. Mike and I have been mutual Twitter followers for some time now, so it was cool to finally meet him in person.

Special thanks to Craig Berntsen, Phil Gilmore, Nate Zaugg, Pat Wright, Jacob Glines, Mike and Tom Erickson and Misty Fowler for being our hosts for the show, it was a pleasure to meet you all! Also, thanks to Mike Berry and Milan Negrovan for making the trip in, it was a pleasure to meet both of you as well.

We have a few photos from the weekend on our Facebook page, at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=131214763781&aid=386369.