CodeCampSA 2007 - Reflections
- I’m glad I organised wireless network access!
- The directions weren’t great, which Peter has acknowledged. A few temporary signs around City West campus would have probably helped too.
- I liked the food (catering was done by 3rd Goodwood Scouts) - a nice change from pizzas, but I think Mitch is probably right in that a barbecue doesn’t scale to a Wagga-sized event. You’d start to run into concurrency issues - nothing worse than a deadlocked sausage :-)
- Wagga does have a tradition of all going out to eat somewhere on the first night - maybe something could have been arranged for Adelaide too.
- Nametags - not everyone likes them, but I think they help with mingling/mixing and getting to know other people.
- Public transport in Adelaide isn’t great early on a Sunday morning. Not a problem for everyone, but for those of use with one car it’s something to consider.
- It would be great to make use of all the talent in the room and finish Sunday with an “expert panel”. When you have the likes of Mitch, Dave, Greg, Greg and Darren in the same room, that’s a great opportunity you want to take advantage of.
- I missed not having Rob around. That would have been the icing on the cake!
- For a CodeCamp, I’m not sure that there was heaps of code to be seen. Having said that, I found some of the non-code talks really interesting - Design by Contract and Web Sales come to mind.
- The turnout was good, but it could have been better. I know that weekends aren’t always free for people, but to pass up an opportunity to learn from some of Australia’s top speakers is a big call.
- It was great that UniSA’s School of Computer and Information Science sponsored the event, but apart from Allan Baird welcoming everyone on Saturday morning, it wasn’t clear to me if there were any CIS students or staff actually attending the weekend. I would have thought this was a great opportunity for students to network with people in the industry as well as learn heaps too. Funny it doesn’t even get a mention in their News and Events.
- Interesting discussion on Saturday as to whether naming the event ‘CodeCamp’ is a turnoff for people attending.