The first thing that comes to mind when I think about Code Camp 4 last weekend is the sense of being blown away by the great content I picked up on Saturday. I’ve been to TechEd, DevTeach, other conferences that cost real money, and the value I picked up Saturday at Code Camp was just as good as a day spent at “legitimate” conferences.
The quality of speakers at Code Camp was simply incredible when you think about the regional and non-structured nature of Code Camp. Robert Holmes, Robert Hurlbut, Sam Gentile, Raj Das, Richard Hale Shaw, Mark Mullin, Julie Lerman, Carl Franklin, Patrick Hynds, etc, etc. Added to that talent pool, Code Camp is also a great opportunity for guys like me to present on subjects we happen to know something about.
The most exciting presentation for me had to be Scott Jamison from Dell demonstrating Outlook and SharePoint integration with VSTO 2005. I've been waiting for Outlook .NET support for a long time and what Scott demonstrated got me stoked. This presentation, along with Robert Holmes' VSTO talk earlier in the day locked me in on the idea that building applications for Microsoft Office is something I am really looking forward to. My users will adore me even more than they already do after they start using some of these sweet VSTO Office .NET apps I'll be building. Yessir!
I headed out of Beantown and back to Vermont late Sunday morning, so I essentially missed day two. Still, it was a full couple of days since Friday noon when I left Vermont for the 4 hour drive. I was able to hang out with one of my dearest friends and his family on Friday evening in Boston, received a BIG ol’ blast of information from a full day of sessions on Saturday, my IssueVision-Project Streams talk went well (everything worked and we had some yucks), and I got to nerd out with my .NET buds Saturday night at the Westin. I really hated to miss Richard Hale Shaw's two talks on Generics at the end of the Sunday blocks, but there was a serious conflict on the first session with Carl Franklin's “RSS and You” talk. (That was another thing I’ll remember from Code Camp 4: too much choosing between great sessions.) I hope a lot of the people attending Sunday caught Julie Lerman's ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 talk at 10:45. I raved on that in an earlier post.
Don't forget to check on the session materials as they come in, posted here.
My final thoughts on Code Camp 4 are the same as after Code Camp 3: Thom Robbins ROCKS!