So we are under one week left until the first ever Vancouver Code Camp.  To tell you the truth, one year ago I would have never imagined that I would be putting on a conference, let alone with 200 guests 10 sponsors and 17 presenters.  It is definitely exciting. 

With time winding down I’m in the process of taking care of the last bits and pieces.  I emailed out the entire list of registered attendees with an update and asked them to un-register themselves if they do not plan on attending.

The presenters got two emails lately, the first letting them know that they have to have their final bio’s and photos online ASAP, and the second was to let them know the agenda has been finalized and for them to make sure it fits with their schedule.

This week we are getting the Agenda and Survey actually printed.  For the Survey I opted for pretty generic questions about the event and not specific questions about the topics covered or the presenter’s skills.  

We are planning to have full lanyards for every guest, which means sitting at home doing a Word Merge with a Sql Database and babysitting the printer for a few hours.  We plan on color coding the lanyards as well.  White for all of the Attendees, Green for the presenters, blue for the coordinators and pink for the volunteers. 

I hope to have a large Sponsor’s board up at registration so I will have to see how quick and easy it will be to get a decent sized print out of all 10 logos and paste them onto some sort of cardboard or something.  I know this is a code camp and shouldn’t be based around advertising & marketing but I just feel that those that did sponsor the event are entitled to some sort of bare bones advertising.

Once the event is all finished I guess all there is to do is make a backup of the entire user database (so I can spam them for next year!)  and take registration off-line.  This will force a whole new registration process for each and every attendee in order to keep the list nice and clean.  Next year I plan to upgrade the DNN Portal to the latest and greatest.

I decided to be one of the presenters as well, Owen Rogers and I teamed up and will be discussing Continuous Integration with CruiseControl.NET and how to get the fancy build status lamps to turn on and off via X10.

I have a few backup presentations ready just incase a presenter pulls a no show or simply cant make it for whatever reason.  If two don’t make it I guess I will have to make one on up the fly.  That’s ok; I’ve been working on some nifty code for my GPS mashed up with MapPoint.  I’ve also been working with fingerprint recognition SDK from Griaule.  Oh yes, and I have a full slide deck on an introduction to Web Services (ASP.NET/SOAP) which I presented to the class which I’m TA’ing at BCIT.  All of which I could easily put something together at the last minute.

1 Comment

• Sean Hando said Monday, March 13, 2006 3:23:00 PM

  You mention in your Monday, March 13 blog that 'I emailed out the entire list of registered attendees with an update and asked them to un-register themselves if they do not plan on attending'. I registered back in early November '05 and don't recall ever receiving your unregister request e-mail.
  
  How can I confirm that I was properly registered for the Vancouver Code Camp next week as I do plan on attending? My login info is still working on the Code Camp web site.
  
  Please reply to my e-mail shown below if possible.
  
  Sean Hando
  sean_hando@hotmail.com