Where to go instead of PDC?!?
Jon Box recently posted this question on his blog - Where do I go instead of PDC? (Since it was canceled this year.) He lists the big events that are happening more and more frequently. One that he left out is the Heartland Developer's Conference $150 for Oct 18th & Oct 19th in Omaha, Nebraska. They consistently have what looks like an awesome event that I, as an event planner, use as a measuring stick to how well I am doing. Of course, he mentions DevLink.NET, which John Kellar and I have a healthy competition always cooking as well, after all, he and Michael Wiley are the whole reason I really pushed myself and went from "one of these days" to actually putting on the first Tulsa TechFest last year. They are always a tough act to follow.
In my opinion, to answer Jon's question would simply be that everyone should go to all of them that they possibly can. The very same applies to the normal .NET User Group meetings in your areas. It benefits everyone. The more that attend, the bigger speakers, more sponsors and prizes. Everyone benefits when everyone shares their individual experiences and perspectives.
OKCodeCamp is shaping up to be a great first time effort and not just because I'll be speaking there. As one of our members pointed out (just more friendly competitive fuel) - it should have been OKCCodeCamp -- which means it currently is okcOdeCamp. :)
Of course, I am partial, but Tulsa TechFest is going to rock this year. It only being our second one, those that attended last year will be amazed at the differences between the two events. Not wanting to give a whole lot of specific details away just yet, here's just a few:
As Jon mentioned, Jason Zander - General Manager for the .NET Framework will be delivering the very opening keynote.
Sean Alexander - Director of Microsoft Silverlight
Michael Scherotter - Microsoft Developer Evangelist from San Francisco
Markus Egger - Publisher of CoDe Magazine and President and Chief Software Architect of EPS Software Corp.,!
Wally McClure - host of the ASP.NET Podcast
Jeffrey Palermo bringing a "Party with Palermo Tulsa TechFest Style"
Bill Vaughn - SQL Server Guru of no equal and author of numerous SQL books!
Ambrose Little - Infragistics Codemunicator
The list definitely goes on and on.
Stay tuned to the web site for more updates very shortly. You can look at the details of last year's event and get an idea of what will be happening this year because a very high percentage of the speakers from last year have been contacting us ready to do it again. That speaks a volumes to the success of last year.
Oh, and Jon, we'd love for you to come and speak as well. :)
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About dwalker
David Walker has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant with companies such as: Texaco, Bank of Oklahoma, Winner Communications (ESPN.com) and IBM Global Services. At the age of 14, he began his application development ambitions with a Commodore 64, BASIC, and a 300 baud modem. Even at that early age, he primarily focused on two specific application types: multi-user communities and database applications.
His hunger to learn as much as possible about development lead him through courses such as DBase III, DBase IV, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and several in UNIX. He started his development career first doing heavy processing with Access and VBA, then moved on to VB 3, Oracle, and Delphi. Visual Basic was one environment that remained constant for many years, including his very first .NET projects performed in Visual Basic.NET.
After working several years on very high end internal Corporate applications, the consultant company he was working for, sought out his ideas for actual software products that could be packaged and sold. He had already developed several prototypes of a dynamic portal application, before portals even became popular, so this became the logic decision and he became the Director of Product Development. Under his direction, a team of developers and graphic artists, took a skinning approach before that become popular, and completed the core portal application, and continued on to developer 15+ add-on modules, including things such as: Help Desk Ticket Systems, Change Control, Records Management, Human Resources, and many more applications. Eventually, it spun off into it's own separate company as KnowledgeGEAR, a complete intranet in the box solution.
Having worked as a consultant, he has had a experience with a very wide range of applications and architectures, at one time, even converting several Fox Pro and GW-Basic applications to VB 6 and ASP. His early training of Unix and the C language and years of experience with JavaScript, lead him very quickly to C#, where he has remained focused ever since.
He is the current President of the
Tulsa Developers .NET user group.. He has been an MCP since 2003 and MCAD and MCSD since 2005. He is currently pursuing his MCDBA and then on to MCSE.