Atlanta Code Camp

I just got home from the 4th Atlanta Code Camp attended by approximately 350 dedicated passionate IT professionals evidenced by giving up their entire Saturday to be there. The venue host was DeVry University Decatur campus just a few miles from my home.

I've attended all four Atlanta Codecamps and this was definitely the best yet. Codecamps tend to be a full day affair beginning at 8:30 and ending around 6pm. And you have to stay until the end to participate in the highlight...a grand giveaway of the best prizes and swag you will ever see at any technology event. At every past codecamp I've always been the "Charlie Brown" as one of the few there winning absoutely nothing (almost everybody wins something). But this year I won a 4 gig Zune and a 5lb book on ASP.Net 3.5 development. I couldn't believe how my luck has suddenly changed for the better.

The day started off well when I attended my first session on how to setup 3rd party hosted ASP.Net sites and found the presenter is a fan of WebHost4Life the same hosting service I signed up for last week. He gave us a good set of tools like Filezilla and tips for 3rd party hosting that will save me much time and many headaches. Another good session was on the Community Kit for Sharepoint an open source initiative to "fill in" some needed sharepoint functionality around blogs, wikis, and forms based authentication. I can't wait to install the new enhanced blog solution on our sharepoint 2007 portal.

Codecamp is a wonderful learning event with a full money back guarantee (it's free). The only bad part is the lack of a wireless connection all day. This year they fed us grilled burgers and dogs with all the trimmings or veggie pizza for lunch.

Some of the new tools I gained from camp were Filezilla ftp client, WSPBuilder, Sharepoint Skinner, Sharepoint Manager 2007, .Net Reflector, and how to create a 12 hive toolbar. Guess I can't ask for a refund this year :)