Had a Great Time at Austin Code Camp 2011

Every year there is one event that I look forward to attending and that is Austin Code Camp. This year I had a great time once again at this event.  I've learned that one of the greatest benefits of attending the event is being introduced to some many valuable gems of information. Usually the classes are great and just deep enough to spark my curiosity. I think the one hour duration for those talks is perfect for a few reasons:

  1. The talk covers enough ground to allow me to decide if I want to delve deeper into the topic on my own.  I usually do (eventually).
  2. The talk introduces me to tools, concepts, events or resources I've never heard of before (and that's exactly the reason I love attending these events).  
  3. It gives me a chance to attend more classes throughout the day than if they were two hours or longer.
Here is a list of the things that I learned about that made the day worthwhile

Orchard

Orchard is an open source(Web) Content Management System (CMS) framework by Microsoft that allows rapid development of websites.  Lately I've been getting a quite few requests from some of my family members and friends to build some simple websites for their businesses ventures.  Orchard is what seems to me as the perfect tool for this.  There is no way I can reasonably develop a quality LOB application on a small budget.  No offense to small business owners but LOB software development is expensive.

Orchard provides enough capability for even my non-techie family members to manage some of their content reasonably well (at least I hope it does). That's a great benefit because I can release some of the maintenance responsibility to them.  If you are interested in learning more about Orchard, download WebMatrix and look for it in the options when building a new website or visit the Orchard Download website.

Business Intelligence

The talk on Business Intelligence (BI) with Jeffrey Palermo was great.  Why I have never heard of BI is beyond me.  It seems that everyone in the room had heard of it.  Even Jeffrey admitted that BI is simply a buzz word for reporting, or better said, providing the information necessary to make intelligent decisions.  BI is not what I found interesting though.  What I found interesting was the talk on this concept of Star Schemas to denormalize and store data for reporting.  Quite an interesting topic and something that I should look into for use in my current project.

jQuery

Ok, I must admit, I had heard of jQuery, but the intro class was still great because Kassandra Perch pointed out some cool tools.  For example jsfiddle.net to test your jQuery on the fly; jsfiddle.net.  And also color-schemer for us poor non-designers.

Furthermore, it was refreshing to see intro level classes like the Intro to jQuery class.

Dallas Day of Dot Net (2012)

Dallas Day of Dot Net  - March 9-10 2012 Scott Hanselman and Phil Haack will be speaking. Enough said.


User Group TV

UserGroup.Tv - If you want to see user group speakers but couldn't make the conference or want to see speakers outside of your user group area visit usergroup.tv.

Summary
This year was a great success for the Austin Code Camp.  We all had a great time. If you want your inspiration stimulated and would like to pick up some of these gems, make sure that you attend Austin Code Camp next year, or if you're from a different area attend your local code camp. 














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