Missed CodeMash

[Robert Casto]

I missed CodeMash 2008 and would like to find another gathering
with the same discussions and presenters. Anyone got some ideas?

--
Robert Casto
www.robertcasto.com
casto....@gmail.com

[Dianne Marsh]

Hey Robert,

As one of the organizers of CodeMash, I would have to refer you to
CodeMash 2009! :-) This conference is not repeated and the speakers
and talks (and community) are only in one place for 2.5 days out of
the year. Soon, presentations from speakers will be online at
www.codemash.org, and that might give you a feel for some of the
talks, but I think that the real benefit in CodeMash comes from the
experience of putting together developers of different languages in a
non-confrontational, cooperative way, in a conference that is not
driven by corporate profits, but rather by geeks who want to learn
from one another.

Bruce Eckel just released a blog post on his experience at CodeMash
and other community-driven events. Check it out:
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=223487

CodeMash really is a fun time. I truly enjoyed riding the "Toilet
Bowl" in the water park with Brian Goetz and Bruce Eckel while my
husband and kids watched (and laughed) from above. I loved the
reaction of one mom who joked that we were "indoctrinating" the kids
at an early age by adding KidzMash for kid activities. Dick Wall did
an awesome talk on Android that left me wanting to learn more more
more (and people followed him in the Ask The Experts room to do just
that). Dick's talk on Guice and Google Collections Library was well-
received as well. Catherine Devlin's "Smash Crash Kaboom Python" was
a great introduction to what Python can do, and an Open Spaces talk on
Ruby for Java Developers filled the room. Dustin Campbell showed off
some features of F# and awed me with his presenting skills. Jay Wren
talked about the Castle Project and threw in a little Boo. Kevin
Dangoor talked about Dojo with Google Gears. Amazon was a sponsor and
rumor has it that they had just asked if it was OK for sponsors to
convene an open spaces session (answer: yes, of course) and headed off
to the board to schedule it, when they realized that someone else had
convened an "Amazon Web Services" open spaces ... and it was in
progress! Their tech team quickly joined the group.

I'm just scratching the surface. PLEASE come next year! Most of the
attendees were from Michigan and Ohio, but there were stragglers from
around the country: Alaska, South Dakota, Washington, California,
North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and more. I suspect that number
will grow.

Hope to see you in '09 (and/or at the Java Posse Roundup in March!)
Dianne

> casto.rob...@gmail.com

[Robert Casto]

Not fair. If I had known about it I would have taken vacation
to come this year. I heard about it on the podcast but
not soon enough. It was too late to go. I was hoping there
was some other similar gathering that I could attend where
the same people would be and similar talks. I'll be there for
2009 but I don't want to wait that long. Any ideas anyone?

[Dianne Marsh]

Robert, are you in the Midwest? If you are and can travel to a LOT of
user group meetings, you will run into some of the speakers and a
bunch of the attendees. And, there's an Open Spaces Agile Coaching
Camp coming up in Ann Arbor that looks great: http://agilecoachcamp.org/

Several people from CodeMash will be at PyCon in Chicago in March.

And uh ... the Java Posse Roundup. :-)

Interested to hear others' ideas.

Dianne

> casto.rob...@gmail.com