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Author: Lucas

Resident of Akron Ohio, Seasoned Technologist and Software Engineer, President of Holeshot Software, Homebrewer, BMW Enthusiast, Sigma Tau Gamma Alumni from Miami University

Why your Twitter picture is important…

Last week, as I sat in the conference center at the Kalahari with bloodshot eyes, double fisting Monster Energy drinks, anxiously awaiting the start of CodeMash while I forced down some bacon and eggs to get me going, I realized something:  I “know” all these people.

I looked around the room and said to myself “hey, there is Corey Haines, Alan Barber, and there is Jay Harris and Leon Gersing“, and I did that pretty much that entire day.  Something was different this year, and it was that I recognized people.

A friend of mine told me a story where he went up to Jim Holmes to register and he said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”.  My buddy immediately made a huge smile and leaned over the counter to get a little closer to him and said, “Does this look familiar?”.  You see, Ryan Lattimer’s twitter picture is a close up of his face he had taken at work, and when he did that, Jim got his joke and immediately recognized it was from Twitter.

I follow nearly 700 people, and I use Tweetdeck groups to help separate the blazing feed of posts from everyone in my list to my friends and certain keywords I am looking for.  If I happen to see something on the “All Friends” ticker, then I’m just lucky.  But there is something to be said about seeing those faces over and over again.

Now, back to my story about why your Twitter picture is important.  I have been twittering back and forth with Charlie Sears (of notorious CodeMash Rock Band fame) about some homebrewing techniques for the past few months, and I knew he was going to be at CodeMash.  I had never met the dude, but when I saw the faux-hawk I knew it was him, well, because of his Twitter picture.  When I finally went up to say hello, he told me he didn’t know how to find me because the only way we knew eachother was from Twitter…..and my Twitter logo is a picture of my car 🙁

Those of you that do actually know me (not in the Twitter sense), know that I am pretty obsessed with my car, and it has always been kinda like my online persona.  I never really wanted to have my ugly mug all over the Internet.  That is great and all, but I realized it has limited me because there is no way that anyone could have been sitting in that conference and recognizing me if I hadn’t previously met them.  I’m no celebrity, but knowing someone’s face was an immediate ice breaker to go up and talk to them.  You may even know a little bit about them beforehand, but at the very least you already know their name.

So, all of this being said, I have decided to take a crappy picture of myself with my webcam and change my Twitter picture, as well as my LinkedIn picture, Gravatar, etc.

My “online persona” is now actually ME.  (if you want to see or talk about my car, I’d be happy to oblige upon request)

So, we have a year left until CodeMash v2.0.1.0. and you may have way less than that before your next conference.  This is my challenge to you:  If you are one of those XBox avatars/Car Pics/Random pictures of your kitty on Twitter (or anywhere else online for that matter), try using a picture of yourself and we will all “know” eachother before we have ever met.

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Obligatory "Hello World" Post

Alright, I have been saying that I am going to do this for a long time. After getting re-energized at CodeMash 2009, I have decided to give it a try.

By no means am I an expert, and by no means do I expect to be good at this right away.  But, I do consider myself a constant learner, so any feedback and opinions are welcome.

So, this site has been up for a few months now, but I haven’t done anything with it. My colleagues have been asking me, “You haven’t event put a “Hello World” post up yet?”

More on what this blog is going to be to come.

And its done, my first blog post ever!

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In summary, CodeMash 2009, the Hands of Fate

I have only been to 2 technology type conferences in my relatively short career, BOTH of them have been CodeMash.

CodeMash 2008 was when I came home and said to myself, “I’m gonna start a blog”.  CodeMash 2009 was when I did it.

I cant begin to explain how cool of a conference this is.  I would love to know about another conference where I can see this:

    1. a keynoter in socks talking about pointy haired bosses
    2. a discussion panel and .NET rocks recording where the attendees get half blazed on a bottle of Makers Mark, throw the discussion topic out the window (sort of), and argue about JavaScript versus Silverlight
    3. a giant slide that says “SHIT!!! we built it wrong”
    4. me laughing out loud during a session because @fallenrouge was making faces through the window behind the speakers back
    5. a slide of the Icy Hot Stuntaz on repeat in what we called “the dining hall” (do you remember these guys?)

But the truth is, the reason CodeMash is so cool is because of the community.  It is awesome to be surrounded by others who have the same if not more passion for the craft than you do.  To be able to walk up to anyone, introduce yourself, and get immersed in a conversation that interests you both is priceless.  The sessions, the information, the sponsors, are all top notch, but CodeMash is about the people you meet and the connections that you form.  Because man, let me tell you, these are some of the smartest yet down-to-earth dudes I have ever met, and getting them all in one building so that I can talk to them is pretty amazing.

Short of talking about every session that I went to, I do want to highlight a few things:

I got up early Wednesday morning and headed out to the Kalahari in Sandusky, OH to attend the precompiler.  The precompiler was a new concept this year in that they would have some longer, more hands on sessions that you could break out of your shell a bit and explore areas that you were not comfortable with.  I spent the morning learning about Groovy, and the speaker said we could put that on our resume now 🙂

After lunch, I went to the “Turning the Ship” session with Dave Donaldson.  I have to hand it to Dave on this one.  He had spent the previous night in the hospital due to a car accident on the way to the conference.  Just the fact that he showed up and did his thing was cool, but it was an awesome session on top of that.  He ran it with an laid back attitude, but it was highly interactive, so the conversation was not only pertinent, it was fun.  Dave is an extremely cool dude, and I was glad to meet him.

That night was the panel discussion/.NET Rocks taping on RIAs.  Not only was it informative, it was entertaining as hell (see #2 above).  It hasn’t been posted yet, but be sure to check back here if you missed it (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/)

Thursday started off with a wave of excitement for me.  I had been looking forward to this for a long time.  The morning began with Venkat giving his keynote of the facts and fallacies of software development.  I had not previously heard Venkat talk before, and he was impressive.  There is a talent in speakers that keep you entertained while giving you technical information, and he has it.  Venkat spoke first because of some keynote scheduling problems (he was scheduled for the afternoon) and that turned out to be a good thing.  His speech was, well…energizing and inspiring; a great way to kick off the event.

Brian Prince is another one of those speakers that has the ability to make an hour session feel like 15 minutes.  I have heard a lot of praise of his “Soft Skillz” speech since he first gave it a while back, but I have never been able to see it.  At CodeMash 2009, I did, and it was worth it.  My only criticism is that I wish we had more time.  It would have been a great 4 hour session for the precompiler.

Friday I attended a session on MS Robotics vs. the Antique Robot.  No, the Antique Robot was not the speaker, Andy Craze, but in this case a Hero 1 from 1982 (Andy is a good friend and colleague of mine, so I can make jokes like that).  I was 2 years old when this robot came out, and the session was using code from the current MS Robotics studio to manipulate the robot.  Hats off to Andy for bringing a unique but relevant topic to the CodeMash arena, and congrats on the session.  If you were to gauge success by the amount of smiling faces when that robot started to move via a Bluetooth serial adapter, then it was a raging success.

Lastly, I attended a very cool session given by Joe Kuemerle about reverse engineering applications.  I am quite familiar with .NET reflector, but I was still able to learn some things about the other ways of reverse engineering code, as well as some plugins to Reflector that I was unaware of.  It was cool to see a session that wasn’t “here is how you do this”, but rather “here is how they do this”.  I overheard someone in the class say, “Holy crap!  I need to go back to work right now!”

I couldn’t possibly write about every session without being at the keyboard for a few days, but those are the highlights that I felt like mentioning.

So, in summary, CodeMash 2009 rocked the catbox, and I have already started my countdown for next year.

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