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The vendor area contained several tables from companies trying to recruit or sell their products. To encourage you to visit the vendors, each attendee got a “bingo” card. At each vendor table, you got a sticker put in designated square on the bingo card. You then had to write your name on the card and drop it in a box to be entered into a drawing for a Star Wars Xbox. The drawing would be held at the end of the day.

Each attendee also got one raffle ticket to drop in the box for the prize of your choice. Various component vendors had donated prizes as well as copy of Windows 8 Pro and a one year subscription to Pluralsight. These drawings were also made at the end of day.

My trip started Friday with a drive to Boise from Salt Lake City. Less than five hours later, I was checked into my hotel across the street from BSU. I wasn’t there long. The speaker dinner was scheduled for the evening at Fuddruckers. It was good to see old friends and meet new people. After downing a burger, it was time to stuff the attendee bags. Then, it was back to the hotel. A good sleep the night before a presentation helps make it better.

Saturday morning kicked off with breakfast and an opening session where we were welcomed and last minute announcements made. The schedule had 10 simultaneous 75-minute sessions across five time slots. I checked in, got my attendee bag, then headed for the green room. Just outside the speaker room, I saw a sign directing people to a prayer meeting. Somehow, it seemed appropriate. Inside, the speaker room was stocked with snacks, water, and even antacid.

I opted for “Designing Web Applications” presented by Nathan Barry. He pointed out that a web application is different than a web site. A web site is something you visit once in a while. A web application is something you use day-in and day-out to do your job. You may spend most of you day working in it. It’s more important that a web application be rock solid because if not, it will affect the user all the time. He talked about wire frames and how to use them to mock up your site. He prefers pen and paper over electronic wire frames. He also talked about the importance of consistency and menu placement. I had to leave the session early because I had the next session.

My first session of the day was in the second time slot. I really enjoy the “Software Gardening” session and attendees again told me how much they enjoyed it. Thank you for those words. Software Gardening is the premise that creating software is not like constructing a building. Software is more organic, changing in unexpected ways at unexpected time. Software is more like gardening and needs the same care and treatment. Good soil, water, light, weeding, fertilizing, and other gardening concepts also apply to software development.

After the standard pizza lunch (it’s cheap and easy to feed 500 people this way), I had my second session, “Ooey GUI Web”. This is a new session this year. I cover the basics of JQueryUI, Wijmo, and JQuery DataTables. The session went a bit rough. It was the first time I had given it. But several attendees talked to me afterwards with suggestions for improvement.

After my session, I attended “Building Better Software with TDD” presented by Richard Clements. It’s an important topic but I’d never seen Richard present. I’m glad I was there. He talked not only about the philosophy of TDD, but also the practical. He showed several examples of TDD in action and why you want to develop your applications using TDD.

The final session was “Scrum Challenges” by Richard Hundhausen. The session was presented in a agile way. Attendees wrote questions or problems they have with Scrum on Post-It Notes, which were then put on the front of the podium. Rich would select one and we’d discuss it, then move to another question. It was very effective. One important thing I got out of this session is that there is no such thing as Sprint 0, meaning you don’t plan before you start work. You only plan and design far enough ahead to deal with the first Sprint. Each Sprint after that, you update the design to handle the code you’re writing. Remember, running code is the most important thing to come out of the Sprint.

After the final session, all attendees congregated for the prize drawings. Several companies donated software or hardware. Unfortunately, I didn’t win.

Boise Code Camp was a great day of learning and networking. I hope to make it back again next year.

Ahhh.. spring. What a great time of the year. Days are getting longer..and warmer. The smell of rain storms and fresh flowers fill the air. The only bad thing about spring is that is means the end of ski season. But I smell something else. Spring also means Code Camp season is beginning. And I like that.

I’m kicking off my Code Camps tomorrow with a visit to Boise. Boise Code Camp is a great event held on the Boise State University Campus. I don’t like the Smurf Turf, but the tech community in Boise is great.

I’m giving two presentations. The first is a encore presentation of Software Gardening. Here’s the description:

Creating great software is not like construction. It’s more like gardening. In this session you will learn about important software gardening concepts such as soil, water, seeds, light, pruning, insecticide, weeding, and more. Along the way you’ll see processes, concepts, tools, and techniques that you can use in your software gardening project. By applying the ideas presented in this session, your software will be lush, green, and vibrant. This session has often been named “best of Code Camp” by attendees.

The second is a brand new, first time presentations, Ooey GUI Web.

Having a good, consistent, clean UI is important, but how do you do this? In this session we’ll look at free UI widgets to get you going. You’ll see how easy it is to add these widgets to your web pages and see some customization on them too. Along the way we’ll visit jQuery UI, Wijmo Open and more. A basic understanding of jQuery is recommended but not required.

I’m not sure of the times and rooms for these sessions as the schedule isn’t online, but out these sessions. I’m sure you’ll learn something from them.

This past Saturday was Utah Code Camp. I’d say it ran really smoothly. There were great sessions, starting with David Starr’s keynote. Something new this year was a non-programming session given by an attorney. The topic was Intellectual Property law for developers. It was very informative and well attended.

Every speaker did a great job and provided good information to attendees. Thanks to our speakers for all the prep time they put in before the conference and their desire to share their knowledge and expertise.

As one of the organizers, I saw several areas where we will work hard to improve for our Spring camp. The first is lunch. We want enough lunch for everyone so that you won’t have to wait for a second round of pizzas to be delivered. We also have some website tweaks to make, such as username/password recovery. We also are already talking about sponsor changes to make it better for you and for our sponsors. If you have ideas to make code camp better, let us know. After all, code camp is for you.

One thing that happened that has me excited for the future is the support of sponsors. Here is Salt Lake, we’ve long suffered by lack of support from Microsoft, but DevExpress and ComponentOne both came through with not only prizes, but each company sent a representative from Southern California to be a speaker. And both pledged support for Code Camp and area user groups. Bottom line, component vendors are stepping in where Microsoft has dropped the ball.

Finally, thanks to our attendees. You are the ones we’re working hard to support. You are the ones that really make Code Camp possible. See you in the spring.

I’ve signed up to speaker at Portland Code Camp, May 22 at Portland State University. My topics are Continuous Integration in .NET and .NET Static Code Analysis, which is a reworking of my I’m Doing Continuous Integration, Now What session. I’m looking forward to being in the Rose City. If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, I hope you can make it.

Got confirmation today that I’m speaking at Boise Code Camp. The camp is March 27-28. I’ll be there on Sunday, March 28. I’ve changed the title of my topic, but the content is the same. It’s “We’re doing Continuous Integration, now what?” I’ll talk about StyleCop, FxCop, and SandCastle, and how to add them to your CI process.

Register now for Utah Code Camp, Sept. 19. One of the biggest names in the industry is the Keynote speaker. Dr. Alistair Cockburn, one of the guys behind the Agile Manifesto and Use Cases. There are some other heavy hitters coming from the local community: Pat Wright, Aaron Skonnard, Aaron Zupancic as well as nationally known presenters Aaron Skonnard (yeah, I know, he was on the local list because he lives here), Joe Mayo, and Jason Beres. There are many others with some great content. Oh yeah, I�ll be there too presenting �Domain Driven Design for the Average Application�. We�ll have lots of stuff to give away. Best of all, it�s free! Register today and I�ll see you at camp.

I will be speaking at Desert Code Camp in Tempe, Arizona on Saturday, May 31. Topics are “Continuous Integration in .NET” and “Introduction to LINQ”. I hope to see you there.

The Code Trip guys shot some video at the Boise Code Camp and it’s now online. They talked to me about being a roadie and the MVP program. You’ll see that at about 2:27 into the video. For you old Fox guys (aren’t us all old?), you may recognize Richard Hundhausen, who is now big into Visual Studio Team System. Anthony Testi, a Fox dev from Oregon was also a speaker there and several Boise Fox devs were in attendance.

Boise Code Camp was fantastic. It was held this past Saturday on the Boise State University campus. They had 500 people register and about 375 showed up. Amazing! I think we had about 100 at the last Utah Code Camp.

My favorite session was “Architecture Fish Bowl”. Think of it as a panel discussion where any audience member can get up and join the panel. When someone does that, a current panel member has to sit in the audience. Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman moderated. Some things I picked up from the session:

- Architecture does not equal design. Architecture is far more reaching than a single application. The design fits into the architecture.

- One way you can tell you’re doing architecture is if there is governance around it.

- The roll of the architect is to provide direction
- I learned a new term, “Refactorbation”. It refers to people who just sit around and tidy code.

- Architects aren’t the founatain of all knowledge. They should hold “town meetings” to get the input from other members of their teams.

Richard Hundhausen did a great session on Visual Team System Database Edition. I had never seen this part of Team Suite before, but I’m now convinced it’s the only way to do SQL Server database maintenance. You can run tests on your TSQL code, store stored procedures in source control, run code analysis on the TSQL and more.

My third favorite session was one on “Prism“, a new package coming out of Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices group. Glenn Block, who is on the P&P team was there to show it off and this was the first time Prism had been shown outside of Microsoft. Prism is not a new CAB or part of the Enterprise Library. Prism is designed to manage composite WPF applications. This is where you have a form with a menu, toolbar, and maybe some kind of links on the left-hand side. The main part of the form hosts different plugins that are the main UI. The first public test release is available here.

Other sessions I attended include Service Oriented Architecture and NHibernate. My session on Continuous Integration went very well. I heard great feedback on it after.

The Code Trip crew was there too, shooting video for their site and Channel 9. They asked me about being a Roadie on the bus and about the MVP Program. I’m still waiting for the video to be posted.

Saturday evening, The Code Trip crew sponsored a party at the BSU Hall of Fame. Great food and lots of fun. There were three XBox 360s set up. I tried my hand as a drummer in Rock Band and failed miserably. Not surprising since I’m musically declined.

All in all, Boise Code Camp was fantastic. I’m hoping to make it again next year.