Upcoming Events - Richmond, Ruby DCamp and more
The next couple of months are pretty busy for me. There are several items worth noting whether I'm speaking or just plain attending. This is a great season for community events and chances for continuous improvement.
Richmond Code Camp - October 4, 2008
This weekend, I'm going to be attending the Richmond Code Camp in Richmond, Virginia. I have the privilege of presenting "Approaching Functional Programming in C# or How I Lost the ForEach and Learned to Love LINQ" in which I discuss many of the topics around functional programming aspects while using C#. This discussion will include functional programming concepts, where C# fits, where it doesn't along with things you need to keep in mind. Amanda Laucher will also be in attendance presenting some functional programming concepts, so a good time will be had by all.
As part of the discussion, my sample code as always is available on MSDN Code Gallery at the Functional C# Project. I'll post my slides shortly after the discussion as well. Hope to see a great crowd there.
Ruby DCamp - October 11-12, 2008
Another great event coming to the Washington, DC area is Ruby DCamp. Up until very recently, many Ruby conferences have followed the traditional paid speaker and audience mold. Instead, this is an Open Spaces event for Rubyists from all areas to converge on our nation's capital to decide the agenda. I've found the Ruby community to be filled with some very bright people, especially in the Washington DC area with the DC Ruby Users Group (DCRUG) and Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group (NOVARUG).
RubyDCamp will be held at the Holiday Inn in Arlington, VA. Best of all, it's metro accessible as well. Visit RubyDCamp.org for more details. Register today at Eventbrite!
KaizenConf - October 30 - November 2, 2008
The Continuous Improvement in Software Development Conference will be held at the end of October over Halloween and into early November. This looks to be a great event for sharing ideas on how we advance our craft through continuous improvement. I will be leading a workshop on Functional Programming Concepts and more in particular F#.
But, what is it all about anyways? Some of the questions that we need to consider are:
- How do we improve?
- How do we recognize new improvements?
- What improvements in the past led us to where we are now?
- How do we decide which improvements to make?
- What values drive our decisions for improvement?
- What improvements can we be making right now?
- What obstructions impede improvement?
- What improvements are on the horizon?
- How can we adapt easier to the changes that improvements bring?
- What are the practices and processes that enable improvement?
Getting to share ideas on continuous improvement are quite important to me, and getting to share them with the likes of Mary and Tom Poppendieck will be wonderful.
QCon San Francisco - November 19 - 21, 2008
The second annual San Francisco enterprise software development conference, QCon will be held in mid-November. The names of participants is literally a who's who in software development today. Names such as Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Eric Evans, Erik Meijer, Don Syme, and even my CodeBetter compatriots Dave Laribee, Greg Young and Jeremy Miller fill the ranks. Tracks include Alternatives in the .NET Space (ALT.NET), Agile Development, Domain Driven Design, Functional Programming and more. Visit qconsf.com and register today!
