CodeStock - Day 1

So, the first day of CodeStock 2010 is finally coming to a close. It has certainly been an eventful day filled with great sessions, and an exciting Keynote.

I started out my day by attending Effective User Interface Design by John Kellar. In this session, I learned about the different things you should take into account when interacting with your customers, designing the applications they want to use. Following this, I spent some time learning about ASP.NET MVC in Dave Giard's session, Building Your First ASP.Net MVC Application. This session was prior to my own session (my very first session ever), Creating an Extensible Photo Application with MEF, so I actually snuck out a little early to make some last minute preparations.

I was very excited to have quite a few attendees in my session, as I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I spent pretty much the entirety of the session writing code example after code example from scratch. Ultimately, what I had created at the end was a simple photo viewing application that supported MEF based plugins for different photo sources. I hope everyone who attended enjoyed learning about MEF! - and thanks for attending my very first session. I'm very happy that I finally get to make a contribution back to the development community.

Later in the evening, I made sure to attend the Keynote where "Community" was the hot topic. Interacting and being involved with the community really makes development fun. I have to say, being that this is the first real event that I've participated in directly, I've felt really welcomed by others in the community. No matter who you talk to, it seems like everyone is ready and willing to engage in conversations, provide you with advice, or simply tell you where the party is at. :)

If you are a developer in or around Knoxville, TN, I highly recommend making your way out to CodeStock 2010. You certainly won't be disappointed!