By and For the Developer Community

Code Camp Now Suggests Sessions you MIGHT want to Attend!

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 27, 2011 @ 7:11 AM

All Code Camp Sessions have multiple tags (like JSON,Java,C#,XBox,Gaming, etc.).  These tags have been used for many years on many many sessions.  You can imagine that when you indicate you plan to attend a session (or even that you are interested), you are tacitly telling code camp you are possibly interested in any sessions that might have that same tag in them.  Well, we now surface that for you in the Sessions Overview page.  If you are logged in and have indicated you plan to attend 1 or more sessions, almost guaranteed, you will now see in purple some suggestions. 

 

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Just to Illustrate this point, let’s say you are a first time code camp user.  You have just created your account and as an avid game developer you find Bill Crow has a session titled Create a Kinect Powered Personal Robot with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio  You indicate that you plan to attend it by checking that box on the Sessions page.

 

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Notice that you have indicated you want to go to a session that has 7 different tags.  C#, Kinect, NET, etc.  Now, when you go to the Sessions Overview page, you will see that you have indicated you plan on attending Bills’s session by the words (Plan On Attending) next to his  session, and also notice that tens of other sessions have been highlighted including “Introduction to the XBox Kinect SDK from Microsoft”  This is because both of these sessions were tagged with Kinect.

 

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Currently, lots of similar sessions are suggested, and since we have lots of general tags like (Mobile), quickly, almost all sessions are suggested.  We are working on that and if you’ve got any ideas on how to restrict the choice to make better suggestions, please let us know by commenting below.  Maybe together, we can make this really useful.

Mobile Viewers For IPhone,Android,Windows Phone 7 From Falafel Software

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 25, 2011 @ 8:30 PM

Falafel Software has once again delivered awesome integration with our Silicon Valley Code Camp Data and the Mobile World.  This year, in addition to all the capabilities we all enjoyed last year, you can now update your personal agenda in these mobile devices by simply entering your EventBoard registration email on the Code Camp Registration Page.  In other words, all you have to do is create an account on the mobile applications from Falafel (called EventBoard), then enter that account name on the Registration page of Code Camp.

 

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To get EventBoard, scan the QR Code, visit http://www.eventboardmobile.com on your desktop or mobile device and follow the download link, or simply  visit the  Apple App Store, Android Market, or Windows Phone Marketplace and search for "EventBoard" by name.  Below is the QR Code if you want to try and scan it now.

 

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In addition. Falafel has put together a short video that gives you an introduction.

http://eventboardmobile.falafel.com/sf3/blog.aspx

 

Don’t forget, it’s really important to select what sessions you plan on attending.  That information helps us put sessions that have the most interest in the largest rooms.  We can’t guarantee everyone will be able to attend every sessions, but doing this, gives us a fighting chance!  You can use any of these mobile apps to select interest.  As always, you can select interest on the web site also.  The pages that allow this (assuming you are logged) are:

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/SessionsOverview.aspx (standard html page)

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/SessionPlanToAttendChart.aspx (fancy Sencha ExtJS 4.0 JavaScript Version)

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/SessionPlanToAttendChartVP.aspx (same as above but customized for the IPad)

 

Looking forward to seeing you at code camp very soon!

A New Page For Showing Interest In Sessions And Counts Up!

Posted by Peter Kellner on June 11, 2011 @ 7:21 AM

Come check out the new Sessions Interest Chart.  Using Sencha’s charting toolkit, we put together a new page that let’s you easily see all of this years sessions and mark which ones you are interested in attending.  Here is what my page looks like with the sessions I’m interested in.

 

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There are several interesting features of this page that I’ve pointed to by arrows. 

1)    You can always quickly get to this page by press the hyperlink on the left top called “Sessions Interest Chart”

2)    Assuming you are logged in, you can tell what sessions you have expressed interest in by seeing the little green circle on the left of each session

3)    The columns are sortable by clicking on them (including the little column with the green circle of interest)

4)    If you are interested in going to a session, you can click the button next to the speakers picture to express that intent (you need to go to the normal sessions page to remove your interest if you change your mind)

 

This page really serve to very important purposes.  First, it let’s you easily navigate sessions and see what is coming to code camp (even by how many days since the session was submitted so you can see the new ones easily).  Second, it helps us know what you are interested in so we can allocate code camp resources appropriately and make sure we track important sessions.

For those wondering how we built this, we basically modified one of the samples from the Sencha Library (ExtJS 4.0).  The FormDashboard example.   It’s amazing how simple something like this is to put together.  If you want to see the details, we actually put the source Javascript code right in the page so simply view source will take you right there.

For those that want to see the code right away, I’ll paste it below.

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Spotlight on ORCSWeb

Posted by Peter Kellner on October 5, 2010 @ 6:37 AM

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Jeremy Hodges has worked at ORCSWeb for the past 4 years and handles a lot of their sales and marketing processes.  As a previous customer Jeremy knows very well what makes and keeps customers happy.  Before joining the company, Jeremy was exactly that, one of their happy customers.  He was part of a two person shop that provided consulting and data services to customers.

Their company landed a big customer that needed 24×7 support and more services than they could reasonably deliver.  ORCSWeb was the perfect partner for them.  They not only did basic hosting, but also provided sys admin services that let Jeremy’s company focus on other very important things.  Jeremy says “Its awesome to not have to worry about the systems going down, security patches and reliability when you are the customer.  Fast forwarding 4 years, Jeremy is njeremyprofileot at ORCSWeb working with customers just like himself

For fun, Jeremy develops web sites in c# for friends, non-profits and also tinkers in opens source projects.  He is a contributor to the Grafiti CMS open source project.  His other passion is performing arts and entertainment.  He recently shot a documentary in Boon North Carolina of a guy that has a 100% organic coffee shop and delivers coffee by bicycle.  This guy will be riding from Atlanta to Boon to rasie money and awareness for coffee growers in Rwanda (carrying 100 pounds of coffee).  Keep an eye on  http://www.baldguybrew.com/ for details.

We at Silicon Valley Code Camp are proud to have ORCSWeb as not only a sponsor, but as our hosting for the web site.  Just like Jeremy before he joined ORCSWeb, we are very happy customers and really appreciated the added level of service ORCSWeb gives us to keep our wheels spinning.

What makes you a true geek?

Posted by David Spark on October 4, 2010 @ 3:55 PM

Hello fellow Code Campers. David Spark here. I’m going to be at Code Camp this weekend shooting some videos of sessions, and interviews with attendees and instructors (see more in the “Spotlight on Dice” post). All the videos will appear on the DiceOutLoud stream and here on this blog. To get you all excited about the event, I thought I’d share this one very popular video that I shot at this year’s Gnomedex conference up in Seattle. I asked the uber-geeky crowd, “What makes you a true geek?” and I got a lot of funny and heartwarming answers. Watch.

“Spotlight on Dice – What’s your Guilty Pleasure App?”

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 17, 2010 @ 10:53 PM

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?"

 

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What Does “Interested” and “Plan To Attend” Mean On Session Listings?

Posted by Peter Kellner on @ 7:21 AM

On the bottom of each session, you’ll see 2 counts.  Plan to Attend and Interested.

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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.

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