Friday afternoon Kevin Hazzard and Justin Etheredge made a stop in Raleigh to pick me on their way to CodeStock. Nothing makes a six hour trip go by as quickly as riding with two very smart and fun developers. We got in around 6 or 7 and went to the pre-conference dinner (open dinner FTW, speaker dinners are elitist) at a little mexican restaurant next to the hotel. I finally got to meet people in person that I have known online for a long time, like Scott C. Reynolds, Alan Stevens, and Michael Eaton.
CodeStock was an excellent conference (the keynote was pure marketing fluff, but everything else was good). I begged to get my talk early so I could enjoy the rest of the day and not worry about having to speak anymore. I did the 10 Open Source Tools talk and I think it went over fairly well. Trying to cram so much into the time was tough and I think I am going to retire that talk or maybe re-work it to just focus on a hand-full of the tools. After my talk I spent most of the time in open spaces and participated in some great discussions around working on a Mac, going independent, and Erlang (which turned into more of a polyglot programing conversation).
After CodeStock we grabbed dinner then headed over to Alan Stevens house to hang out by the campfire, drink some beer, and have a good time.
It has been awhile since I have been to a non-local conference and I am re-motivated to get out and go to more conferences. I already signed up to speak at Richmond Code Camp in October, plan on hitting the alt.net conference, RubyConf, and then the local Raleigh Code Camp.. so it will be a busy fall.
And now for your viewing pleasure, here is Scott C. Reynolds intentionally dropping his iPhone on the concrete. (it was already cracked, but he dropped it about 6 times in a row and it is still working)
