Trip to Baltimore

I was out in Baltimore, Maryland for RailsConf last week. The conference was great, but this was also the first time I've been in Baltimore other than for a flight layover. For the most part I was there for the 4 day conference and eating.

I must say that some of the neighborhoods in the evening/night didn't feel to safe to walk through. Also, the taxis there are so very expensive! I paid $22 (including tip) for a taxi to drive four miles. I'll be sure to have food pictures up on FoodIsHappiness.com soon enough.

But this marks the end of my flying/adventuring for the time being. For the past month I've been on the plane 2-3 times per week, which has been tiring me out. I look forward to staying on the ground for a bit until I can make my way out to California.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

My busted bed when I arrived late Sunday night (no, I didn't break it...)

Harbor Place

I thought this B&N was super interesting.

Hybrid buses. Fast, Friendly, and Free

Full slideshow of all pictures I took in Baltimore (outside of the conference):

Pictures from RailsConf 2011

I had a great time at RailsConf 2011, which took place in Baltimore, Maryland this year. Got the chance to meet and talk with a lot of Rails developers and passionate people. Always a good thing. I admit that I'm a Ruby Nuby, and quite a few of the talks were a little over my head, but in general there was a talk for everyone, no matter what skill level in Ruby/Rails. Also, a good thing. I noticed that Javascript was the common theme across the talks. In fact I didn't do any Ruby programming/playing at all, just Javascript + HTML5.

These are the sessions I attended (or peaked into) plus some of my favorite pictures I took from each day:

Monday May 16 (Tutorial day)

• Building Web Apps with HTML5: Beyond the Buzzword by Mike Subelsky (OtherInbox)
• Rails Best Practices by Gregg Pollack (Envy Labs), Andrew Smith (Envy Labs), Thomas Meeks (Envy Labs), Dray Lacy (Envy Labs), Christopher Green (Envy Labs), Mark Kendall (Envy Labs)
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial (AKA Intro to Rails - Part 2) by Michael Hartl (Rails Tutorial)

Sugar and caffeine break

Tuesday May 17

• Welcome by Chad Fowler and Ben Scofield
• Keynote (The Asset Pipeline And Our Post-Modern, Hybrid, JavaScript Future) by David Heinemeier Hansson
• Fat Models Aren't Enough by Jeff Casimir (Jumpstart Lab) I super enjoyed this talk
• Mining Rails: Learning from Your App's Lifeline by Michael Feathers (Obtiva) and Corey Haines
• Keeping Rails on the Tracks by Mikel Lindsaar (RubyX)
• Confident Code by Avdi Grimm (ShipRise LLC)
• 25 Deployment Tips in 50 minutes by Anthony Burns (LivingSocial), Tom Copeland (LivingSocial)

DHH opening keynote

My pic with Chad Fowler, rocking my Chicago Code Camp tshirt

Wednesday May 18

• Double Dream Hands: So Intense! by Aaron Patterson (AT&T Interactive) I came late to this one, part of welcome/keynote
• Inside Groupon by Michael Cerna (Groupon)
• Scaling with Friends by Geoffrey Dagley (Zynga with Friends)
• How to Handle 1,000,000 Daily Users Without Using a Cache by Jesper Richter-Reichhelm (wooga GmbH)
• Controlled Chaos: A Case Study Of Introducing Rails into An Operational NASA System by Dan Pilone (Element 84) and Jason Gilman (Element 84)
• Solving Performance Problems with Horizontal Scale (The Worker Pattern) by Ryan Smith (Heroku)

Thursday May 19

• The LivingSocial Story by Aaron Batalion (LivingSocial)
• Being Awesome by Corey Haines
• Code for America by Dan Melton (Code for America)
• Building Rails Apps for the Rich Client by Yehuda Katz (Strobe, Inc.)
• Closing Keynote (Craft, Engineering, and the Essence of Programming) by Glenn Vanderburg (LivingSocial)
• Closing Keynote (Optimizing for Developer Happiness) by Chad Dickerson (Etsy)

Free Schwag given away

Full album here.

For official O'Reilly pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oreillyconf/sets/72157626743161970 I'm actually in one of the photos, in the background.

Speaker Slides:
http://railsconf.com/slides

Keynote Video and Other Interviews:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL379EA9290474C86C

Pictures from Chicago Code Camp 2011

Chicago Code Camp 2011 (CCC3) has wrapped up! I had a great time going to various sessions, learning new things, and meeting/talking with great people. I wish more of these events would take place in the Chicagoland area. I think about 300 people attended, which I think is pretty good considering the event wasn't even in Chicago! This year, CCC3 took place at College of Lake County, in Grayslake, which is located about 50 miles from Chicago (approximately 1 hour drive).

I won a raffle prize at the end of the day, but I gave it away since I had no use for a teach-yourself Visual C# 2010 in 24 hours. Well, not just no use, but more importantly, no time either since I have a pile of books I need to get though still. I rather give it to someone who would use it rather than it sit on my bookshelf collecting dust. Funny bit: there was Programming Sharepoint book as a raffle prize that almost no one wanted.

I hope to get around to blogging about some of my thoughts related to some of the sessions soon enough. It'll have to wait a bit since later on today I will be heading out to Rails Conf in Baltimore, Maryland. I'll be there May 15-19. I hope to rock out with my CCC3 shirt out there too.

As always, here are some of the pictures I took at Chicago Code Camp 2011. Full album here.

The updated schedule

Registration at 8:30am

Snacks and drinks (lots of caffeine)

Michael Eaton talking about going Independent

Dave Hoover and Damien Tanner pair-presenting on PusherApp

Clark Sell hosting a discussion on the Chicago Tech Community

Steve Kim presenting on GNU Smalltalk

Everyone waiting in the JLC for the raffle prizes

The nice prizes for the raffle

Chicago Code Camp 2011

The schedule for Chicago Code Camp is now up! You can register for the free event here. You can follow them on twitter at: @chicagocodecamp. The twitter hash tag to follow at the event is: #ccc3

The link to actual schedule: Chicago Code Camp 2011 Schedule (this link may not work in the future-- beyond 2011).

This is the list of sessions I'm interested in. I may jump in/out between some sessions that are running in parallel, or pick one when the event gets closer.

First Session (9:00 - 10:00)

• B118 // SOLID, DI, IoC… WTF? by @sbeardsley
• B155 // Introduction to Node.js and Express by @calebcornman

Second Session (10:15 - 11:15)

• B142 // Git More Done by @dahlbyk
• B155 // Build a Multiplayer Node.js Game in 48 Hours by @jsuchy

Third Session (12:30 - 1:30)

• B155 // Creating a DSL in JavaScript using node.js by @bmavity
• C005 // Web Sockets with Pusher by @redsquirrel

Fourth Session (1:45 - 2:45)

• JLC // Advanced Android Development by @jfarrell
• B155 // How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love jQuery by @davidgiard

Fifth Session (3:00 - 4:00)

• B156 // Introduction to GNU Smalltalk by @skim

Chicago Code Camp

Saturday, May 14, 2011 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (CT)

College of Lake County

Technology Building: room T326-328

19351 West Washington Street

Grayslake, IL 60030

View Larger Map

Upcoming Meetups for Spring and Summer 2011

I'm back in Chicago for now! Just got off the plane a few days ago. Anyway, I'm almost ready to get back into going to some tech meetups in the US now. A lot of great events coming up!

Chicago Ruby: Downtown - Marking Up the Web with Graffiti
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 6pm
To be held at ThoughtWorks.

Chicago Silverlight Users Group
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
To be held at the ITA building.

Chicago ACM: Web2Py
May 11, 2011 at 5:30pm
To be held at Loyola University Water Tower Campus.

Chicago Code Camp
Saturday, May 14, 2011
To be held in Grayslake, Illinois. I'm registered to go to this one!

RailsConf

May 16-19, 2011

To be held in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm thinking about going to this one.

Chicago Alt.net: Guerrilla Agile
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
To be held at Redpoint Technologies. If I'm not in Baltimore for RailsConf, I'll go to this.

WindyCityDB
Saturday, June 25, 2011
To be held at Westin Chicago in River North.

Ignite Chicago
July ??, 2011
TBA

BarCamp Chicago
July 9-10, 2011
To be held at Pumping Station One. Too far ahead for me to plan if I can go or not.


I'll update this list once I get more information. It does feel good to be in Chicago again.