If you’ve been to the Sessions listings either on the primary sessions page, or the sessions overview page, you’ll have noticed several new ways to search. On the Sessions page, you can now choose between days (Saturday or Sunday), and in those days, you can pick which timeslot you want to look at. Saturday has 5 time slots, and Sunday has 4 timeslots. The menu is just above the top session and looks like what I have below.
Sprint is known for its telephone and wireless cell phone service, but Sprint also has a very active, cutting-edge developer program. Nathan Smith, who heads the application developer program for Sprint, said, “A lot of people think Apple created this space, but they didn’t. Sprint has had a program since 2001…We are very focused on mobile. Even though many developers got in with iPhone or Android, we have been in the mobile development space for 10 years.”
Ryan Wick, Sprint’s lead technician for mobile applications, will be the Sprint speaker at Code Camp. Ryan, who has 10 years experience in mobile development, is coming all the way from Tampa, FL. One of the key messages he will have for developers at Code Camp is, “It doesn’t matter if you are the best developer. If your app or interface isn’t very usable, then it doesn’t matter that you have the greatest app or webpage created. Technology and usability definitely go hand-in-hand.”
Mehul Harry is a technical developer evangelist for DevExpress. He is a big fan of Technical blogs, such as ScottGu’s Blog, and loves to listen to podcasts on his free time, such as, Radio Lab. Of course, he is a huge fan of DevExpress’ Blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Mehul feels that all of these communication channels are importan
t for their business growth and building relationships.
DevExpress is happy to be a sponsor for our Code Camp again. And they’re excited to get the opportunity to host a booth for the first time. They have seen over the years that this is a very important event to attend based on the attendees and the conversations that arise. This event allows attendees to network and learn from one another. The Devexpress team also loves when they get to meet customers in person and discuss their products.
Four employees from Devexpress (Mark Miller, Woody Pewitt, Steve Andrews, and Seth Juarez) will be at the DevExpress booth and conducting different sessions on Microsoft technologies, including: The Science of UI, MVC, and Machine Learning. They are all very passionate about their subjects and our thrilled to share with the Code Camp Community.
Make sure you stop by the Devexpress booth. They will be giving away a DExperience license and other cool swag and prizes.
It has been a very busy week for the Silicon Valley Code Camp planners. We now have 193 sessions posted with times. 5 sessions on Saturday October 9th and 4 sessions on Sunday October 10th. It’s looking like about 25 sessions will be running concurrently at all times. For those of you that did not get your email (or it was blocked for some reason), I’m attaching it to this post below.
We are super excited to have Dice join us this year as a Platinum Sponsor at Silicon Valley Code Camp. In addition, Dice will be at the event shooting and producing videos of Code Camp. Dice’s vlogger is David Spark, a 15-year veteran technology journalist, on-air talent and producer that’s appeared in more than 30 media outlets 
including eWEEK, TechTV, Wired News, PC Computing, and PC World. Spark blogs at Spark Minute and is currently a regular contributor to Mashable, Socialmedia.biz, Technologizer, KQED’s "This Week in Northern California, and John C. Dvorak’s "Cranky Geeks" where he will be appearing on the last "Cranky Geeks" episode ever this Wednesday.
Spark will be at this year’s event with camera and Dice microphone in tow. You’ll see him interviewing presenters and attendees and he’ll want to know why you came to this year’s Code Camp and what you learned. Look for David Spark with his camera and Dice microphone. Don’t hesitate to introduce yourself especially if you’ve got a great story to tell.
Here’s an example of one of Spark’s fun videos he just shot this week at the APPNATION Conference in San Francisco. While there Spark asked the attendees to tell him "What’s your guilty pleasure app?"
On the bottom of each session, you’ll see 2 counts. Plan to Attend and Interested.
When the site first becomes live (~4 months before the event), every session starts with 0 interested and attendees can not click “plan to attend”. Anyone who is registered can mark interest in a session. It’s more a curiosity than anything else because the interest is very proportional (for the most part) on how long the session has been listed. Notice on Douglas Crockford’s sessions that his “Talk with Crock” session only has 2 people interested. This is because he just listed this second session, not a reflection of true interest. When attendees register the first time, it explains this.
After the sessions are put on the agenda for the world to see with times, we “interested” not show anymore, and encourage people to press the “Plan to Attend” to let us know they plan to attend that session (they can only plan to attend one session per time slot). This is explained in emails to all attendees. That is, all attendees need to tell us what they plan to attend so we can allocate room sizes appropriately. Our rooms vary from 250 to 40 so it really matters, especially with 25 sessions at a time.
Also, just a side comment on what happens when you select Interested or Will Attend. You of course have to be logged in to the site to do this. When you do click your choice, the count does not change. The reason for this is programmer lazyness. At somepoint we will fix this. It’s actually an xmlhttp post so it is very unintrusive to your browsing experience. The numbers are also cached so that every session display (session painting is slow enough with 180 sessions listed) does not go back to the database and count interest level of all sessions.
One final note. Will Strohl, the DotNetNuke User Groups Team Lead and Media Module Team Lead asked me what the difference was between interested and not interested which inspired this post. Will is new to the bay area and is doing 3 sessions this year at Code Camp. Make sure you introduce yourself to him and welcome him to both camp and our wonderful part of the world when you see him. You also might remind him to change his profile to not say he based in the Orlando area any more 
.
That’s it for now. Hope this explanation helps.
Lino came to the US in 1990 eager to begin working in technology. In his career he has worked for an array of software companies working in the areas of development to consulting. In 2003, Lino started his second company, Falafel Software (http://www.falafel.com/). Falafel concentrates on software development, consultation, and training services. Being a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Lino’s team aids in the highest quality consulting with a team he has worked with for 10 – 15 years.
Lino began speaking all around the world on behalf of Microsoft in 1994 mainly about emerging technologies. Lately he has been speaking heavily on mobile (see many videos at http://vimeo.com/falafel or tv.falafel.com). This year Lino and his team have 22 sessions at Code Camp. They will be covering, of course, mobile and future Microsoft Technologies. 
This is Falafel Software’s second year as a premier sponsor. Lino said that Code Camp is a great experience for working developers to get out for a bit to “see where the world is right now” and where technology is heading. That is what Lino loves best about Code Camp; that developers from all over the Bay come together to talk tech. Because Lino and his team had such a great experience in the past at Code Camp, he was happy to up their 4 sessions to 22 sessions. Lino is excited to see old and new faces at this year’s Code Camp; hoping that Code Camp exceeds last year’s attendance of 1,500.
