My Background with CodeStock

It was probably about three years ago that I was attending a SQL Saturday when one of the speakers (I wish I could remember who, so as to give proper credit) asked if anyone attended various community technical conferences. I jotted down the names that he threw out there, and then forgot about it for a while.

A few months passed, and then I ran across my note. I started to look up the conferences, and the one that really stuck out was CodeStock. It was an annual event held in Knoxville, Tennessee and the mix of topics from the most recent gathering looked to be just about right. The conference had already passed for the year, so once again I put the notion on the back burner but continued to watch for announcement of the next time around.

Then in late January of 2014, the notice came: the event would be held on July 11-12 of that year. I continued to watch as the call for speakers opened and close, a keynote was announced, and in due course the session voting began. The list of available sessions sealed the deal for me, and I attended the conference in July. Then again in 2015.

And now I’ve just returned from the 2016 event.

CodeStock 2016

So a quick overview of my CodeStock experience this year is in order.

It began with the keynote address by the excellent Cory House (b | t), who also presented the keynote during my first year. His basic theme was that it is OK to be anywhere on the technology adoption curve (bleeding-edge, mainstream, legacy), so long as it is a deliberate and informed decision. My favorite take-away was a comment regarding providing praise to others. Cory presented it, as I recall, in the context of complimenting a child’s accomplishment. Saying that “you’re so smart” is easy but downplays the actual achievement. Better to say, “You must have worked really hard.” I like that.

I won’t summarize every session I attended, but I’ll just highlight a couple. That’s not to suggest that any of the others weren’t worthwhile, but there were a few that really stood out.

I loved what I came to think of as the “encryption two-for”: back-to-back sessions in the same room starting with Steven Swenson (b | t), who gave a nuts-and-bolts presentation on how to use cryptography in applications, including several concrete implementations.

Then Adam Caudill (b | t) discussed the state of modern cryptography, include what is broken today, what is likely to break soon, and what remains solid. Then he moved into a fascinating explanation of where crypto appears to be headed in the next few years.

These two sessions provided a great “level-up” for me on a topic where I have a fair bit of interest but haven’t keep up on things lately.

I also attended the Women in Technology panel discussion. It was a good conversation and there some quality questions that arose, but the standout to me was the “adventure” that the moderator proposed with the leftover time during the session. She wanted everyone to meet someone new and to have a discussion with them. Honestly, this is the kind of thing that frightens me, being the big-time introvert that I am. Fortunately, the two people sitting on the same row with me had already left, so I figured I was off the hook.

Not so. Just as I getting ready to head on out, the moderator herself came to me and said, “You’re not talking to anyone!” She then began the conversation, and it was actually pretty fun and welcoming. A couple of other women also joined in over the next few minutes, and it ended up being a highlight of the conference for me. So thanks to them for engaging with me.

On the second day of the conference I mostly attended some “soft-skills” sessions, something I have tried of late to incorporate into conferences that I go to. They were all quite valuable, but the one session of the day that really resonated with me was from Cameron Presley (t) on the SOLID principles. I’ve tried to wrap my head around these ideas in the past, but Cameron finally managed to show it in a way that really made sense to me, so thanks to him for that. Now I’ve got a couple of personal projects that need a whole lot of refactoring.

Conclusion

CodeStock is an awesome and growing conference that has become a summer ritual for me over the past few years. It is interesting for me, as someone who mostly lives in the SQL Server world, but who dabbles in software development, to get to attend a conference like this and at least stay somewhat current on where the dev world is at and where it is going.

One last note. I think I was asked about three or four times if I planned to submit to present next year. I think it’s great that there is so much emphasis on growing a speaker base. (I actually did submit a session for CodeStock this year, but in the end was actually somewhat relieved when it wasn’t selected. May and June ended being pretty busy for me and it would have been challenging to create a presentation on top of all that.)

But yes, I have found myself noodling over what I might submit for 2017.