DevBlog

Never heard of DevLink? Too bad. It's a small developer conference held in Nashville and it's fantastic! I had heard about it in the past, but never been there until this year. It's three days of jam packed geek goodness. I met lots of great people, connected with old friends, and learned lots, lots, lots. I also hope my sessions were interesting and informative. I'm always looking for input, good and bad. If you were in my sessions and have feedback, email me craig at craigberntson dot com.

Day 0 started off early. I took a red eye from Salt Lake City to Atlanta then a short jump to Nashville. I arrived Wednesday morning so I could attend the Community Summit that Microsoft was holding. I was at Pat's Bar-B-Que in downtown Nashville. This place is reported to be the best in the country and I have to say it was pretty dang good.

We started off playing a game. Sheets that contained the letters of the alphabet were handed out. The trick was that each letter was from the logo of some company. We had to figure out the company it came from without using the Internet. I still haven't figured them all out. The idea was to get us to meet other people and start talking to them.

After enjoying lunch, the discussions got started. First, it was important to define community. Three important items came up:

• We're a community of developers, no matter what language we use
• We should learn from everyone
• We should be teaching new people

Jon Keller, who runs DevLink, then talked about how to build events:

• You must have a passion to help others and create a great event
• Ability to talk to people you don't know
• You need a reason to do the event. It should be done for the community. If you're doing it for your own reputation, it's for the wrong reason
• The event must be reasonably priced
• The topics need to be relevant
• You must say no to sponsors who try to guide you and make the event more for them than the community
• You must understand your target audience
• Don't do it alone. Get some help
• Have a great venue

We heard a brief overview of GiveCamp. There have been GiveCamps going on around the country. Basically, it's a weekend of coding and sharing, where the goal is to create an app, website, etc for a non-profit?and do it free of charge. Sounds like a great time and a better cause.

We then suggested topics for small open spaces groups and broke up into those groups. I chose a discussion on alternative user group formats. Unfortunately, the red eye caught up to me and I left early to get some sleep. But, here's what I gleaned from the discussion:

• Hands-on presentation. We did this recently at the Utah .NET User Group for a presentation on doing TDD. It was a very effective way to present the topic. Just make sure the word gets out before the meeting so that everyone brings their laptop.
• Geek dinners. We've had .NET User Group lunches here in Salt Lake in the past, but I'd like to see them more often
• Fish bowls. This is kind of a panel discussion, but there is always one empty seat on the panel. Anyone in the audience can get up at anytime and take that seat, but someone on the panel has to go sit in the audience. You can't talk unless you're sitting as one of the panel. I participated in a fish bowl last year at Boise Code Camp and thought it was a great idea.
• Give tokens for UG participation. After x number of tokens, you get a prize.
• Code and coffee. This is a small gathering, usually six to eight people that meet for coffee (or your beverage of choice)

Microsoft said they will be aggregating all the discussions and posting them online. Once I get a link to them, I'll pass it along. A big thanks to Microsoft for putting this together.

// posted by Craig Berntson @ 10:35:00 AM