Just a quick reminder CodeMash early-bird registration ends on November 15, so be sure to register soon in order to take advantage of the special $125 pricing!

Register here:
https://www.codemash.org/register.aspx

I’m very pleased to announce we’ve completed the selection process for 45 of the 49 speaker sessions scheduled for the coming event! You can view descriptions of most of these sessions here:

http://codemash.org/SessionList.aspx

Among other topics, this year’s sessions cover among other topics Dojo, Python, .NET, Ruby, Rails, RIA, Guice, Castle, Hobo, Django, Grails, Zend Framework, TDD, Groovy, and even a few robots…. What’s not to love?!?

Jason

CodeMash session submissions continue to pour in ahead of the October 15 deadline, making the selection process more difficult than ever! If you’re interested in speaking at the event, be sure to submit your talk by no later than this coming Monday!

Remember, CodeMash is a conference which brings developers of all walk together, with talks on .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, Rails, Python, Ajax, and much, much more, therefore if you’re talk is cutting-edge and cool, it’s a great candidate! See the 2007 agenda for the breadth of topics we’re looking for.

Taking place this January 9-11, in Sandusky, Ohio at the Kalahari Resort (aka the nation’s largest indoor water park), attendees will be treated to two days of sessions on some of today’s hottest technologies, including .NET, Ruby and Rails, Java, Web frameworks, Ajax development, and maybe even something on hacking robots and Wiis.

And at just $125 for the two day event, plus a special $88/night Kalahari hotel rate, you’re not going to find a better event for the price.

Hope to see you there!

Jason
CodeMash Speaker Coordinator

Registration for CodeMash is now open! Taking place this January 9-11, in Sandusky, Ohio at the Kalahari Resort (aka the nation’s largest indoor water park), attendees will be treated to two days of sessions on some of today’s hottest technologies, including .NET, Ruby and Rails, Java, Web frameworks, Ajax development, and maybe even something on hacking robots and Wiis.

We’re sorting out the incredible number of speaker submissions now, and plan on having a preliminary list of sessions posted later this month.

And at just $125 for the two day event, plus a special $88/night Kalahari hotel rate, you’re not going to find a better event for the price.

Hope to see you there!

Jason
CodeMash Speaker Coordinator

Register for the event

The CodeMash call for speakers is now open!

http://www.codemash.org/SubmitTopic.aspx

Continuing the theme of educating attendees on a wide variety of technologies, tracks include: Rich Clients, Web Frameworks, Development Processes and Methodologies, Architecture and Design, and Languages. We’re also organizing an open spaces event for somewhat more informal talks, more to come about this later!

Jason

CodeMash wrapped up last Friday with a prize giveaway consisting of literally hundreds of computer books, an Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii, and various other items slipping my mind at this early hour. All of these prizes were courtesy of our wonderful sponsors. Before departing, fellow organizers Josh Holmes and Brian Prince made good on their promise to shave their heads in return for 500 attendee blog posts made over the course of the event (technically we fell just a bit short of 500 but they didn’t want to let the chanting crowd down). You can see the resulting hairdos (or is it hairdon’ts) on Flickr.

All said the conference seems to have been a success. Attendee buzz and feedback is still going on at our Google Newsgroup. In fact, so much post-conference interest was generated that “CodeMash” was the #1 most searched term on Technorati over the weekend, and even today it’s still #7.

Keynote speaker Bruce Eckel offered a great event summary, as did attendee Cal Evans (Zend’s Devzone Editor-in-Chief).

Fellow organizer Darrell Hawley offered a detailed breakdown of involved parties, therefore if you’re interested in learning more about who was responsible for this mess, I’ll point you to his blog. Darrell does however leave one particularly important person from the list: himself. Darrell was the primary interface between the conference team and the Kalahari venue, and dealt with a neverending list of tasks.

We’re already talking about CodeMash v.2.0. Stay tuned!!!
Check out the Flickr Photostream

Fellow conference organizer Josh Holmes has thrown down the gauntlet. If 500 CodeMash-related blog posts appear in Technorati by the conclusion of today’s event, he’s going to shave his head. Now that’s dedication.

CodeMash day 1.5 is well under way, with languages guru Bruce Eckel’s afternoon keynote in full-swing.

So far, it seems the CodeMash objective of bringing together developers from a variety of backgrounds is ringing true. This morning’s sessions covered an amazing breadth of topics, ranging across MySQL, Rails, EJB, .NET Smart Clients, TurboGears, SOA, and Python. The Rails and Smart Client talks were particularly well-attended, however all sessions have been seeing a fair amount of traffic so far.

Taking advantage of a bit of downtime at the moment to catch up on some email, then will swing around each room to make sure the next round of speakers are ready to go, before ducking into Rob Stevenson’s JRuby talk (or perhaps Ben Carey’s Beyond TDD session, tough call). It’s been a very interesting learning experience helping organize and run CodeMash, sometimes soon I hope braindump a bit regarding our experiences and lessons learned.

I’m heading up to Sandusky in about an hour to help make the final preparations for CodeMash, slated to officially begin early tomorrow morning. Later this afternoon developers from all over the midwest and even as far away as Atlanta will begin pouring into the Kalahari Resort for two days of technical instruction, discussion, water slides, and other fun.

If you still want to come but haven’t yet registered, registration will be open from 5pm to 7pm this evening, and all day tomorrow. Onsite registration is $199.

I’ll be blogging about the event over the next several days, hope to see you there!!!

Jason

Just one week away until CodeMash (http://www.codemash.org/)! Even at this late stage, people are registering daily, with over 250 attendees on the roster as of this morning. It’s no wonder, given the amazing speaker lineup. Of course, the onsite indoor waterpark and sports bar might also have something to do with the interest. :-)

The CodeMash committee continues its sprint to tie up various loose ends, coordinate travel, and help get our kind sponsors situated. It’s been a lot of work, but very exciting all the same, not to mention quite a learning experience.

Last evening we finally got around to setting up a Google Group for conference-related items, and its already abuzz with chatter from various attendees. Why didn’t we think of doing this months ago?

It’s very exciting to see this coming to fruition, and I can’t wait to mingle with attendees and learn about some really cool technologies. See you there!

Jason

I’m admittedly amazed at the number of session abstracts we’ve received over the past few weeks, the interest in CodeMash has far exceeded what I think any of the organizer’s expected!

There’s going to be some pretty amazing speakers there, including among others Scott Guthrie, Bruce Eckel, Neal Ford, Scott Ambler, Joe O’Brien, Jay Pipes, and Mary Poppendieck. Topics cover the spectrum, including a few sweet Ruby and Rails talks, MySQL, .NET, Java, agile testing, NHibernate, architecture, development methodologies.

Early-bird registration is now open, just $99 for the two day event! We’ve also arranged for a $88/night rate at the event venue, the great Kalahari Resort. If you’re thinking about coming, I suggest signing up now because seats are filling up fast.

http://www.codemash.org/SessionList.aspx