CodeCampSA 2007 - More reflections

A few more things that have come to mind.

• Lunches seemed a bit rushed. I was surprised to see that Wagga’s schedule only allowed 30 minutes for lunch too.

  Even though I liked the BBQ, they did appear to have problems keeping up with demand - eg. the second tray of cooked food came out just as we were heading back in.

• Not enough time for questions. Most sessions probably ran over-time (I suspect I was guilty of this too). Having a consistent 5 minute warning would probably help everything keep on track better.

• A better web site. I’m not convinced that the “news” page on ADNUG’s site was the best place to promote the event and session times. Carl and Richard from DotNetRocks seem to agree - I was pleased that the event was promoted on their podcast, but they commented a number of times about the lack of information on the web page.

  I’m thinking it either needs its own independent web site, or see if we can have a space on CodeCampOz.

Don’t get me wrong, while I’ve listed things that I think could be improved, I did enjoy the weekend and got a lot out of it!

I've been twittered

I just discovered that I was twittered (tweeted?) at CodeCampSA.

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.