2008 was the year I finally decided to get organised and head down to Code Camp Oz. And it was more than worth my time.
For those of you who haven’t attended Code Camp before, it felt to me like a low-key TechEd or maybe a 2-day RDN. The quality of presentations was generally very high – Fernando Guerrero’s presentation (‘Lessons learned while tuning database systems’) was the highlight for me, but I also particularly enjoyed the presentations by Mahesh Kirshnan (‘How well do you know your IDE?’) and Paul Stovell (‘SyncLINQ‘). Phillip Beadle’s presentation on Test Driven Development reminded me of my urgent need to get further up to speed on TDD.
Some other random thoughts from my first experience at Code Camp:
- I stayed at Mercury Motor Inn. I won’t be racing to stay there next year.
- The organisation and catering for the event (including the Wine and Cheese night, BBQ, pizza etc) was very well co-ordinated. A big thumbs-up to all involved.
- I had a real issue finding the venue on the first day (it took me more than 30 minutes, and even then it was only because I followed some other people who had been previously). I think next year I will volunteer to put some signs out on the Friday.
- The WiFi at the venue was surprisingly good (initial connection was annoying, but after that…). I really wasn’t expecting to be able to make VoIP calls while I was there – but it worked well.
- Having my Readify loaner laptop with me reminded me of one key thing I need to consider when picking a new laptop in 2 months – battery life. While the majority of Readify staff seem to get Dell laptops (particularly the XPS M1530) they don’t seem to have the variety of battery options as say the Thinkpad T61P. In fact when I try and spec a M1530 online, Dell doesn’t even provide the option of a second battery (let alone a third!) as part of the transaction.
All in all a great experience. I thoroughly recommend you attend in 2009 – if you live in Australia!
