CodeMash 2009

I had the privilege to attend the Codemash conference this past week at the Kalahari resort in Sandusky Ohio and all I can say is wow, what a wonderful event. Of all things the only thing I can find to complain about was the food…And It wasn’t that the food was bad, it was just the same 3 meals served over the 3 days…the food itself was still quite good.

The main focus of the conference is to bring a unique blend of developers together and spark interesting conversations. I stayed away from the specific language sessions and focused on theory and technique talks…Ruby, robotics and Test Driven Development are all interesting but I thought it was time to change stuff up a bit and learned a great deal about Lean Software Development, Thrashing, Value Stream Mapping and Kanbans.

The overall highlight for me was once again the Open Space sessions. These sessions had a wide range of great topics and offered some great discussions around development techniques, community, learning and personal branding.

All in all I would recommend this conference to anyone brave enough to make a trip to Sandusky in the middle of the winter…And what an adventure that was, ice storm on the way there and a 5 hour snow covered drive for the trek home.

All in all CodeMash == Awesome.