Sessions « News – Silicon Valley Code Camp

Day 1 Wrapped, Congratulations to Everyone! Volunteers, Sponsors, and Attendees!

Posted by Peter Kellner on October 8, 2011 @ 10:01 PM

I love it when a plan comes together. The weather gods were totally on our side, moving the sponsors to the lunch area worked great, the sessions were really well attended and all the feedback I heard all day was just wonderful. We were a little short on sandwiches, but made up on it with extra pizza.

A Huge Thank you!

All through the day, countless people came up and thanked me for putting the event together. First, let me say I really appreciate people saying that because it is a lot of work, but second and most important, I’m really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what takes to put on an event like this. When you look around, you’ll see literally hundreds of people wearing code camp volunteer shirts, staff shirts and speaker shirts. All those people our volunteers and together we make the event a success. I feel blessed to be working with a group like this, and even a little guilty accepting the gratitude when I know so much of the credit goes beyond me. So, to all you people who put in so much effort to make code camp a success, you have my heart felt thanks.

Below are some pictures.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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Great Session On Robotics, Kinect-based hardware! Consumer Robots

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 26, 2011 @ 1:20 PM

If you have any interest in robotics, you’ll want to check this out: “Create a Kinect Powered Personal Robot with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio” This session introduces the just released Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 Beta, available as a free download from www.microsoft.com/robotics. Bill Crow, is flying in from Redmond to talk about and Microsoft’s efforts and he will be bringing EDDIE with him. Check out his session at 10:45AM on Sunday.

RDS 4 includes the definition of an affordable, extensible Kinect-based hardware reference platform that supports technologies and scenarios for consumer robotics. Anyone can build a robot using this specification, and we’re also working with robotic hardware vendors that will offer compatible components, kits and preassembled units. Parallax is offering EDDIE, the first such kit based on this reference design. EDDIE and other reference platform implementations provide the foundation to inspire development and technology sharing. RDS 4 includes an accurate representation of the reference hardware platform in its built-in simulation environment. You can design, build and run your robotics application in the simulator before you even decide to buy a physical robot.

RDS 4 provides availability of Kinect services, built on top of the Kinect for Windows SDK. This unlocks some very powerful Human Robot Interaction (HRI) using both skeleton tracking and speech. The raw sensor streams are also available to support navigation algorithms and other advanced features. RDS 4 includes an obstacle avoidance service that fuses the Kinect input with the other proximity sensors to demonstrate how the sensor array can be used to intelligently navigate in a real-world environment.

In RDS 4 also provides the first implementation of robotics programming using Silverlight. This is a first step towards engaging a broader community of developers who might not have previously been involved with robotics, opening the door to a whole new range of robotics scenarios.

Come attend this session for an overview of RDS 4, some specific examples of how easy it is to create your own unique robotics applications, and to see a demo of EDDIE in action.

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Code Camp’s First Ever Career Track, Check it out!

Posted by Peter Kellner on @ 1:01 PM

We’ve posted our first ever career track this year, aptly titled "Career Track"; sponsored by Lumos Labs and Dice.com. This 8 session track includes one of the most popular sessions titled "How to break into Mobile Development" presented by Leslie Stevens-Huffman, career expert and contributing writer to Dice.com. Leslie has helped thousands of professionals find employment during her lengthy career in the staffing industry.

Another top session will be lead by Elaine Wherry, co-founder of meebo. The effectiveness of her “guerrilla” recruiting approach is evidenced by the caliber of employees meebo has hired. One summer, Elaine and her recruiters wrapped hand-written notes around meebo t-shirts and placed them on every chair in Stanford CS221, asking students to consider meebo as one of their post-graduation company choices. Elaine also wrote a spidering engine to pull JavaScript profiles and resumes from the Web.

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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.

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.

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!

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Just Sent A Reminder To All Unregistered folks (who have registered before) that they need to Register!

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 22, 2011 @ 10:03 AM

Our records show that you are not registered for code camp this year on October 8th and 9th at Foothill College, and that you’ve registered in the past. We’ve got over 200 sessions up now and would love to get you registered. Click the URL below and register! We may have to restrict registration this year so sign up now before we close. Click on the link below, mark (check) which day(s) you will attend, then press the update button. It’s free and it’s soon!

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Register.aspx

Then, Checkout all our sessions (all scheduled now).

If you would not like to continue to receive emails, click on the above link and mark that on your registration page or simply reply to this message with unsubscribe in the subject.

Finally, and most important, Spread the Word! I can’t emphasize that enough. We get the greatest speakers in the world because you all come to hear them. Tell your co-workers, post code camp on your internal web site, stand on a corner with a sign! Whatever works, just please spread the word. You can also get some SEO love back from us from your post about code camp. Read about that here: http://blog.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/2011/09/22/get-a-link-from-silicon-valley-code-camps-web-site-back-to-you/

Peter Kellner
http://peterkellner.com
Silicon Valley Code Camp Coordinator

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Session Plan To Attend Chart Now Available! (See Video Below)

Posted by David Spark on September 21, 2011 @ 6:23 AM

This video shows how to choose sessions you plan on attending. It will help you with a nice listing to carry with you (once you print it) as well as help us to plan the room capacities. That helps us to not put our most popular sessions in the smallest rooms.

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/SessionPlantoAttendChart.aspx

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Full Agenda Live on the site now! Over 200 Sessions, 9 time Slots

Posted by Peter Kellner on September 16, 2011 @ 5:55 PM

We have an awesome group of speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds presenting this year. Our topics range from Douglas Crockford, for the 6th year in a row presenting the latest and greatest on JavaScript, Oracle’s latest technology including Java, MySql and TimesTen, Microsoft Latest Windows 8 Metro Application Building with presenters direct from Redmond, all the way to a full career track and patent lawyers talking software! With 210 sessions this year it feels almost overwhelming.

The schedule is live and ready for you to pick the sessions you plan on attending. Keep in mind that now, by default you just see the first Saturday Session when you land on the page. The Navigator at the top of the page lets you look at one time slot at a time. You then pick just the session you plan on attending (and of course you must be logged into your account to select sessions)

http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx

A common question we often get before and during code camp is "What happened to session.". Well, now we have all the answers in one place. As the schedule changes (for any reason) we are keeping a log page of those changes here. http://blog.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/session-change-log/

That’s it for now.

Peter Kellner

Silicon Valley Code Camp Primary Coordinator http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/

http://peterkellner.net/

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Call For Speaker Submissions – October 8th and 9th 2011

Posted by Peter Kellner on May 5, 2011 @ 5:21 PM

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2011 is looking for outstanding presentations covering a wide variety of topics. The theme of these topics needs to have something to do with the technical community and preferably be directly or indirectly related to code. We pride ourselves in being vendor agnostic so it does not matter whether you are Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison or Bill Gates, we want you to come and present at our camp. We expect a wide variety of speakers with skills ranging from full time professional speakers to first timers. We actually encourage first time speakers so if you have not spoken before, please have a go! We review the sessions posted and for the most part take them as is, though we may contact you for alterations or further discussions as necessary.

Typically, we accept one presentation per presenter, however we do make exceptions so feel free to contact us if you feel the need to do more than one and we will try and be accomodating. We only have so much capacity so it is not always under our direct control. Feel free to contact us at service@siliconvalley-codecamp.com if you have any questions. We typically close session submission about 6 weeks before the event so if you want to have the best chance of presenting, you had better submit your session soon. Once you submit it, it will immediately become live on our site so make sure you think carefully about your words before pressing the submit button.

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My five favorite videos from Silicon Valley Code Camp

Posted by David Spark on October 25, 2010 @ 12:00 PM

Here it is. My five favorite videos from Silicon Valley Code Camp along with the other fifteen. Tip of the hat to my editor Ray for doing an awesome job on all the videos, especially the first one. Watch.

My five favorite videos from Silicon Valley Code Camp

	Presentation horror stories
	End of Show Recap: Silicon Valley Code Camp
	Top tips for developers on creating a great user interface
	What’s your proudest developer moment?
	A great explanation of “cloud” computing in two minutes

The rest of the videos from Silicon Valley Code Camp

	Why Silicon Valley is better than Europe for entrepreneurs
	From Code to Product to Business to Brand
	Tips for developing your iPhone app
	Build custom apps fast with LightSwitch
	Patent attorney’s advice on how to protect your brilliant idea
	What is Google’s Prediction Engine?
	Foothill College’s Dean invites Code Campers
	How to bring data into a Silverlight application
	Biggest mistake in product development is not testing for scale
	What do developers need to know about networking?
	Tackling issues with Python and Google App Engine
	Tips for developing across Windows Phone 7, Android, and iPhone
	How to run a successful developer conference for five years
	Utilizing Adobe’s Flex to quickly create apps for the enterprise
	How easy is it to develop in Windows Phone 7?