Mark Freedman’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Career’ Category

As we both woke that early Saturday morning, we already knew exactly where we needed to be in an hour. It was the same every weekend morning when the Mets were at home. This morning, we did it begrudgingly, but we knew it had to be done. We washed, dressed, ate, grabbed our tickets, and went out our doors at the opposite ends of town. We both walked towards the same corner, where we’d always meet and continue our trek to the train towards Shea. We knew we’d both be there. Same bat time, same bat channel*, despite the biggest fight we ever had a few days before.

We met silently, and continued towards our common passion which always brought us together. And this time it brought us back together. Because we always relied on each other being there. It’s what we did. It’s also how we lived. It was who we were, even as teenagers.

We both grew into leaders — he became mayor, and I became director in a fast growing company. But what got us both there is the value we’ve always placed on reliability.

Today, I had to cancel an appointment I made several days ago.  And it hurt.  It’s supposed to hurt.  If you’re going to claim that reliability is one of your key values, cancelling an appointment on the day of that appointment should hurt.  It hurts to remind you that breaking a plan goes against your value system.

As I’ve grown, I increasingly consider reliability a key value, and one of my most important traits. It’s probably why I say "no" to a lot of requests. If I agree to do something, it must get done, and if it can’t, there has to be a damn good reason why it can’t. So I only say "yes" to things I know I can get done, and then run with it until it does.

Which is why I’m in pain today.

A friend and colleague of mine has an idea he wants to implement, and he wants me to be a big part of the project.  I have serious doubts we can make it happen (several reasons), so I’m not committing to it yet.  I know it’s frustrating for him, so I should probably point him to this article in hopes that he will understand why.

So, if you’re in any emotional pain, it’s probably because you’re not living up to one of your key values.

*A popular line from the closing credits of the campy 1960’s Batman TV series.

Wow. What a day. It’s taken me almost two weeks to write about it.

I’ve now been involved in five code camps, and these are the highlights of my year. I’m so grateful that I was asked to be a key contributor in organizing the NYC event. And I’m doubly grateful that my wife, Lorri, and her friend Carol Finley were able to help as well.

Lorri is the adorable one in red.  She took all the code camp photos except the ones at the restaurant for the speaker / organizer dinner, which were taken by me.

Although the code camps put on by my own user group (Fairfield / Westchester) are fantastic experiences, this latest NYC event is the biggest event I’ve had the honor to be part of. And I actually had a chance to see parts of a handful of sessions

One of the many heavily attended sessions.

I’ve worked with some terrific people on organizing previous events, but Stephen Bohlen is that rare person who matches my passion and urgency in running one of these. Not to take anything way from others I’ve worked with, because I know that my other teammates could approach Steve’s efforts if they had the time and energy to do so. The motivating factor of working with someone like that is enormous, and I’m very grateful for that.

Me and Steve Bohlen having a well earned rest, discussing user groups, code camps, their future, and the self-sustaining and perpetuating nature of these communities.

400 people signed up in under a day! On top of that, we had 175 people on the waiting list! Incredible. We should consider having a full weekend in the future. Between the attendee response and the speaker response (we had to cut 75 session proposals down to 40), we’d definitely be able to pull this off.

Some of our many attendees, reading up on the sessions to attend.

Of course, we’d have to make cloning legal to attend all the great sessions we wanted to see.

This has got to be the most exciting and interesting field. Of course, I’m biased. But I’m so looking forward to the Philly code camp on April 10th as an attendee, to catch up on all I’ve missed out on.

The newly renovated Microsoft offices on 6th Avenue is a great place to hold such an event. We even had enough room to hold repeat sessions for a couple of speakers. Now that we understand the room layouts, we’ll know how to better assign the rooms next time.

One of our several SRO sessions.  This one was repeated later in the day.

Considering the size of the event (I believe this to be the largest ever held at Microsoft’s NYC offices), it went extremely smooth. We only had a few glitches, and we recovered quickly. I have to give special thanks to Steve Andrews (a surprise visitor who filled in for a last minute speaker cancellation) and his huge catalog of prepared talks, and Edwin Ames. They filled in just when we needed them. Thanks, guys!

The pizza, supplied by Pronto Pizza, was great, and the delivery was very smooth. We’ll definitely get our pizza from them again.

The standard developer power lunch.

We had a great sponsor for energy drinks – Bawls.  I had six of them before the last two cases mysteriously disappeared.  They tasted great, and were perfect for developers.

We had a wonderful response for sponsors (Lab49, SetFocus, Infragistics, Telerik, Wintellect, JetBrains and SQL Sets).  Without you guys, there’s no way we could have pulled this off. Thanks!

Our sponsors made it possible to feed the masses with food and swag.

Speakers, without you there is no code camp.  Period.  Your contribution to the community is immeasurable.

A favorite rest and mingle area for the speakers.

My favorite hangout spot during the day – the speaker’s lounge.  You learn by osmosis just by hanging around them.

I want to thank the entire organizing team. In addition to Stephen Bohlen, co-founder of ALT.NET, etc., etc., we had great help and input from M&M tolerater, newly appointed Microsoft DE, Rachel Appel, our “always there when you need him” Microsoft DE, Peter Laudati, Mr. Spring.NET himself, Mark Pollack, the world famous BI expert and NYC .NET Developers Group leader, Andrew Brust, long-distant NYC .NET Developers Group leader Stephen Forte (who seemed to be awake 24/7 from Hong Kong, or whatever mountain he was traversing at the time), developer social organizer queen, Sara Chipps, ALT.NET group leader and proponent, and Willie Wonka / Veruca Salt fan, Scott Reynolds, Renaissance man Bill Robertson, and Platinum sponsor Lab49’s own Daniel Chait.  I want to also thank our many volunteers.  I wish I had everyone’s name.

Volunteer Carol Finley resting up at the end of a hectic day.

One key thing that this event got me motivated to do is plan a (hopefully collaborative with Steve Bohlen) book on running these tech events. I think it could be a good companion guide to Dr. Greg Low’s Rational Guide to Building Technical User Communities.  Not exactly sure when we could start on this, but I’m first going to update not only my post on preparing for a code camp, but also finally update the rest of my series.  We learned a LOT from this code camp, and I learned a hell of a lot from Steve.

Finally, although we gave away a LOT of swag (in record time, no less), there is one prize that nobody claimed.  Sorry Forte – we tried

Ready for another code camp?  Well, we can never have too much free learning (what we in the tech field call “fun”), so reserve Saturday, March 6, 2010 to attend the 4th (somewhat) annual NYC Code Camp, from 8:00 AM until 6:30 PM! It will take place at the Manhattan Microsoft office on 6th Avenue, across the street from Radio City Music Hall.

There is no city in the world with the energy and the promise of opportunity than Manhattan, so we welcome everyone in the area to join us for the buzz such an event in our great city offers.

The call for speakers is open until February 5th, and we’d love for you to submit your sessions, whether you’re looking to speak for the first time, or you’re an old pro.  Remember – this is an event by the community, for the community!

To apply for a speaking slot, first please register as a speaker here: http://tinyurl.com/nycspeaker

Then with the email address you registered with on our speaker page, please add as many abstracts as you’d like here: http://tinyurl.com/nycsession

Submit on anything you like in the .NET space. There is no central “theme” to our Code Camp except to focus on topics related to .NET development.

Speakers – although we can’t afford to pay any T & E, we’ll have plenty of pizza and soda, and other fun stuff just for you!

I can’t wait for this.  If you’re wondering why I’m diving into this shortly after running the Fairfield / Westchester Code Camp, it’s because I’m a glutton for learning opportunities, and I’m proud to be on the organizing committee once again for the NYC Code Camp as well.

On Saturday, November 7, 2009, we held the third annual Fairfield / Westchester Code Camp, and I have so many people to thank again this year…

Attendees
You helped make this a great day of learning and connecting with our peers. Although I was only able to witness a few minutes of the actual sessions, I could feel the energy and education happening all around.

Just some of the many attendees

Q & A in Evan Hutnick’s Silverlight presentation

Speakers
I want to especially thank you (including our very own Leo Junquera, who had to fill in at the last minute for one of the speakers who fell ill). Without all of you, there are no code camps. Your contribution to the community is extremely generous, and I know that everyone who attended and everyone who helped organize it deeply appreciate it. Thanks so much, Peter Laudati, David Douglass, Milan Negovan, Edwin Ames, Sunil Kadimdiwan, Dmitry Lyalin, Shrenik Jhaveri, Ivan Krivyakov, Kevin S. Goff, Evan Hutnick, Rick Minerich, Supriyo “SB” Chatterjee, John Baird, Chris Rolon, John Zablocki, Doug Finke, and Ben Poserow.

Peter Laudati and Milan Negovan having the standard geek lunch

Ned Ames, Leo Junquera, Mark Freedman and Milan Negovan

Facilitators
I want to thank my core team, including my wonderful wife and best friend, Lorri, whose help has been tremendous for these code camps. I feel embarrassed that Leo had to be the one to thank her when I was up at the podium thanking everyone else
Of course I have to thank my partners, Leo and James Simon for all their help, as well as Leo’s wife, Allison, who provided great help at the registration booth and helping to reach out to vendors for their support.

Allison Junquera, Leo Junquera and Ned Ames

I also want to thank Sean (I know I must be spelling your name wrong — is it Shaun or Shawn?) who helped with the facilities, and has been a great help for all the group meetings throughout the year.

A short break for S.

As always, the support from Peter Laudati and Microsoft has continued to play a huge role for our user groups and code camps since day one. And I want to thank our “room monitors”, Mark Torrone, Mariam Diakité, and Louis Hendricks, for making sure things were going smoothly at each session so that the rest of us could focus on everything else.

Milan Negovan, Mark Torrone and Rick Minerich - a well deserved break

I also want to thank my friend, David Beaulieu, our audio technician, for recording the sessions at this year’s show. He was running around even more than I was!

David Beaulieu and Mark Freedman

Contributors
I want to give a special thanks to Telerik (Emily and Evan), who helped us get the large Schreiber Reading Room this year! I also want to thank our other contributors, such as CITI, UConn, webloyalty.com, PrimalBits Software, JetBrains, Xceed, and CozyRoc. And things would have been a lot more difficult if it weren’t for the continued support of Eventbrite, Kentico, and Applied Innovations.

Evan Hutnick showing off the latest from Telerik (Mariam Diakité in BG)

We again had 24 sessions, plus a special lunchtime presentation by Telerik. 215 people signed up before we had to shut down the registration again, and we still had some walk-ins!

Peter Laudati engrossing the audience

Rick Minerich hitting the right note with F# (bad pun, I know )

Running these is so exhausting, but so worth it! This year local security opened the doors for us to prepare later than we had hoped, so it was an extra mad rush. Next year we’re looking to shoot for 6:00 AM instead of 7:00 AM.

We had the inevitable last minute room changes

It’s great how people organize themselves at events like this. We had a few minor technical issues, room coordination and sign posting challenges, but the bulk of it is run by the presenters and attendees. We just help keep things going as smoothly as possible.

It’s raffle and thank you time

I expect to have presentation material and code samples from the speakers to post shortly on our main Code Camp site, along with audio from several of the sessions this time around!

We look forward to continue holding these annually. Every year we learn even more lessons about what to do, and what not to do. The evaluation feedback form that you filled out is extremely important in this regard. I’ll be updating my series of articles soon to reflect what we’ve learned.

I want to individually thank everyone involved in running this event, in the order of appearance, more or less. If I missed anyone’s name, I’m truly sorry:

People:
======
Lorri Freedman
Emily Parker
Leo Junquera
Sean (Shawn? Shaun?) — Sorry — I should have gotten your full name, spelled correctly. Please forgive me.
Peter Laudati
David Beaulieu
Christine Beaulieu
James Simon
Allison Junquera
Mark Torrone
Mariam Diakité
Louis Hendricks
David Douglass
Milan Negovan
Edwin Ames
Sunil Kadimdiwan
Dmitry Lyalin
Shrenik Jhaveri
Ivan Krivyakov
Kevin S. Goff
Evan Hutnick
Rick Minerich
Supriyo “SB” Chatterjee
John Baird
Chris Rolon
John Zablocki
Doug Finke
Ben Poserow
Silvia Goncalves

Contributors:
==========
Connecticut Information Technology Institute (CITI)
University of Connecticut (UCONN)
webloyalty.com
Microsoft
Telerik
PrimalBits Software
JetBrains
Xceed
CozyRoc
Eventbrite
Kentico
Applied Innovations

Food:
====
Dunkin’ Donuts
Planet Pizza
California Pizza Kitchen

The Fairfield / Westchester User Groups are proud to present our 3rd Annual Fairfield / Westchester Code Camp! As in the past, this event will be held at the University of Connecticut, Stamford Campus.

We will once again hold 24 sessions (75 minutes each) across 4 tracks, given by some of the best regional and local developers, and will include topics such as LINQ, Azure, C# 4.0, PowerShell, F#, SQL Analysis Services, MVC, Silverlight, and so much more!

As usual, we will have giveaways, food, and coffee. More details, and the schedule, will be posted on the Code Camp website as they are solidified.

Please help us spread the word!

Register Now!

Seating is limited and our focus is technology. No Recruiters, please.