Thoughts on CodeMash 2011

I recently attended the CodeMash conference in Sandusky, Ohio for the first time this week. This was after hearing that I should go for the past three years from friends and former colleagues in both the .NET and Ruby communities.

CodeMash started as a mostly a regional conference, but there were quite a few of us in town from outside of the Ohio/Great Lakes region. Microsoft also chose to officially launch its new WebMatrix platform at CodeMash so the conference got international attention this year.

I’ve attended a few conferences, but the energy at this conference was just infectious. This was the first conference where I was up till at least 2 AM every night due to the level of engaging discussions going on.

I came away with lots of important insights about the future of the .NET platform, the power of Unix based platforms for cloud computing, and proven strategies to break into entrepreneurship.

As for formal sessions, I attended a mix of .NET, Ruby, and Cloud Services sessions. While some of the sessions were interesting, as in most conferences the really engaging discussions happened at the hotel bars and in the hallways.

The connections that I made after attending this conference will be invaluable. I was blessed to be able to finally meet thought leaders like Chad Fowler and personally thank them for their contributions to the community and my own career. I was also fortunate to meet many folks that I’ve conversed with on Twitter over the past few years. And as always, it was great to reconnect with my former Telligent colleagues from around the country as well as my friends from the .NET community in Austin, Kansas, and Iowa.

I was very impressed with the organization of the CodeMash committee and their professionalism in putting together a great conference. I’m hoping to make it to CodeMash every year from here on out. If you’re a .NET, Java, or Open Source developer, you should do the same.