MADKidz

When I first moved to Virginia, the closest person I knew was Jim Duffy in Raleigh.  I was also brand new to .NET (for all practical purposes) and Code Camps.  I asked Jim who the .NET experts were in the mid-Atlantic and one of the first names he mentioned was Kevin Hazzard.  The first time I saw Kevin present, I was struck by his preparedness, presentation skills and in-depth knowledge.  A friend of mine has often said that Kevin reminds him of professors in is his CS program.  (And he meant that in a good way.)

Kevin is one of the best speakers you'll hear anywhere and he's looking to take his skills to a new audience.   Early on in the planning for MADExpo, Kevin asked if he could take on the organization and curriculum for a kid's track.  He's actually proposed 3 single-day tracks designed for three different age groups as follows:

See end of post for more details about each session.

If you've seen Kevin present, you know he has a gift for making even the most complex topics easy to grasp. I'm sure that he and his wife Donna will do the same for MADKidz.

MADKidz Sessions will run concurrently with MADExpo sessions on Friday, July 1.  You and your kid(s) are also welcome to attend the morning keynote, if you think they'd be interested.

The cost is only 20.00 per child (with the purchase of one MADExpo ticket.)  You do need to provide a chaperon for your child(ren).  There is no charge for the chaperon.

You can register for MADExpo and MADKidz here.

Session Details:

Ages 7 through 9

• Duck Duck (POKE 53280, 0) – Fast-paced games that'll get your blood pumping and your mind racing. The focus of the learning is on logic and problem solving with physical games that get the kids moving to beat the clock.
• Radios, Flying Saucers and Motion Detectors – Building electronics using the famous Snap Circuits kits. There are hundreds of experiments possible. How many can you build in an hour?
• Doing Animation with Scratch – Scratch is a wonderful programming tool developed at MIT to help kids play and interact with computers. During this session, the kids will learn how to build simple programs that animate characters on the screen in amusing ways. They'll secretly be learning how to write software but don't tell them that.
• Robot Races – We have several Bigtrack Jr. robots to play with. The kids will program them to follow a specific course and race them against one another.

Ages 10 through 12

• Math Geeks Rule! – Most kids find math either boring or too challenging. That's because it's often taught in a way that the kids can't apply to the real world. This fun-filled, trivia session helps the kids to understand how they can use math in ordinary situations to do some pretty amazing things.
• Extremely Rude Lights and Noises – Make annoying lights and sounds may be one of the best ways to learn how electronics work. In this session, we'll show the kids how to manipulate LEDs and build an amplifier that they can use to make lights and sounds. Will your kids make soothing sounds or irritataing ones?
• Writing Games in SmallBasic – Microsoft SmallBasic is a wonderful tool for bridging the gap between early development in software and a real career as a professional programmer. The kids will learn how to use really cool services on the web to put together an Internet-based game. Then they can publish their game for their friends to play with the push of a button.
• Building a Green Car – A car that runs on water? Our planet is covered with water which is just hydrogen and oxygen. Those elements are packed with energy that might be used to run our cars. During this session, the kids will us e a kit to build a hydrogen powered car, opening their minds to a better, cleaner future for all of us.

Ages 13 through 17

• Science Pictionary – Science terms plus Pictionary. Need we say more? OK, how do I get my team members to guess the word "sodium" from a drawing?
• The Internet of Things – Computers are cold and disconnected from the real world. Until you hook them up to sensors and actuators, of course! In this session, the kids will experiment with a variety of sensors for temperature, light, motion, acceleration and more. They'll also connect some servos and motors to make their devices react to the environment.
• Pizza Money – Doing animations and games on the desktop is fun. The real fun begins when you can put a web-based application on the Internet that makes money. In this session, the kids will build an application that takes orders for a pizza delivery service. Which application will entice customers to buy bigger and better pizzas? Which one will earn the most money?
• Boe-Bot Wars – Two bots enter. One bot leaves. Which bot will reign supreme?

Detailed Schedule coming soon; Early Bird Pricing extended

Steve Presley has created the first draft of the MADExpo schedule and it looks pretty darn good!  The committee is reviewing it as I write this and we'll make it public as soon as possible.

One potential attendee gave us some great feedback about the schedule.  He told us that there are several sessions in which he's interested, but he's not willing to commit to the conference until he can see the schedule to make sure they don't all conflict with each other.

That is certainly a problem with a conference that is running 8 or 9 tracks - there can be a ton of good content, but you can only see 1/8th or 1/9th of it.  I think Steve has done a good job of scheduling the sessions so that people will be able to find a valuable session in every time slot.

Even so, it can still happen that you want to see two sessions that are running concurrently.  At MADExpo, we're going to try to alleviate that just a little.  We're still working through the mechanics, but we're planning to have a very limited number of sessions run twice.  We'll explain a little more about that as soon as we've nailed down the process.

Early Bird Extended
Since we realize that others of you might be concerned that all 9 of the sessions you're interested in seeing are scheduled at 2:00 on Thursday, we've decided to extend the early bird rate a little longer.  Once we post the schedule, the early bird pricing will expire in five business days.

So, take another look at the posted sessions and we'll let you know as soon as the schedule is available.  Then, get your tickets before we close the early bird pricing!

Dining Options

Sometimes, at conferences, it can be hard to find good restaurants without having to travel a fair distance from the event. In that regard, we have you covered!

The Embassy Suites does have a restaurant at the hotel, but just a short distance away, you have your choice of dozens of others with a wide variety of price points and genres of food.

The Peninsula Town Center is .6 miles away and has nearly 20 restaurants.  This is an outdoor "lifestyle" center and many of the restaurants have both indoor and outdoor seating.  There is also a movie theater and even a bowling alley.  (Not to mention book stores, clothing stores, etc.)  The website has details and links to each restaurant with menus and locations.

Peninsula Town Center restaurants:

• Abuelo’s Mexican Food Embassy
• bd's Mongolian Grill
• Bensi Ristorante Italiano
• Chipotle (Maybe Darcy Lussier will join us?)
• CinéBistro
• Five Guys Burgers
• Frank Beamer’s American Grill
• Hayashi Sushi & Grill
• JoJack’s Espresso Café
• Kenji Fusion
• Outback Steakhouse
• Q Barbeque
• Terra Restaurant and Bar
• The Greene Turtle
• The Pub
• Vincent’s Gourmet Italian Ice
• Yogurt Vi

There are many other restaurants in the area, as well as a Target and most other things you might need while you're away from home.

Some of you may be looking for a place to buy beverages to keep in your in-room fridge.  Virginia allows the sale of beer and wine at grocery stores (and Target may sell it as well - I'll have to check it out.)  If you're looking for something harder, you'll need to get it at an "ABC" store.  The nearest one is 1.1 miles from the hotel.

Did you register for MADExpo yet?

Hotel Breakfast

Really, a blog post about breakfast?

Yes!

We're really excited that the official conference hotel is the Embassy Suites Hampton Roads.  This is a beautiful hotel that is literally steps away from the convention center.  (They are connected by a covered walkway.)

We will be providing a continental breakfast in the Hampton Roads Convention Center first thing in the morning, but if you're staying at the Embassy Suites, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of the free "made to order" breakfast in the hotel.

To quote their website:

Complimentary Cooked-to-Order Breakfast 
No matter how you like to kick start your day, our cooked-to-order breakfast is sure to please. Our menu is packed with delicious breakfast options that can be tailored to match your tastes, from omelets to fresh fruit or cereal.

Fellow organizer Andrew Duthie stayed at this hotel when he was in the area for business and couldn't say enough good things about the omelet he ate that morning.

You might also be interested in the Manager's Reception on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

If you haven't made reservations for the hotel yet, you can do so here. Use the group code "MDS" or mention that you're with the "Mid Atlantic Developer Expo" if you call. The conference rates expire on May 30th, so book your room soon.

If you haven't registered for the conference yet, you can do so here.

Friday Morning Keynote - James Ashley

It looks as though we're going to have two* great keynotes at MADExpo. I'll have another post about our Thursday keynote (hint) from Wintellect's Jeff Prosise soon.

Before I even got involved with the conference, there were several names and topics surfacing as potential keynotes.  The community organizers had started conversations and things were falling into place.  I think the original plans called for one single opening keynote, but it seemed as though there was potential to add a second on the morning of Day 2.

Organically Derived Keynote

When we opened up speaker submissions, we got a lot of great topics.  One of them, from James Ashley, caught our attention as they were coming in.  The title was certainly not your usual code-camp or user group session:  What Recent Breakthroughs in Nerd Psychology Can Teach Us about Software Development. The abstract asked some pointed questions like "why don't tools make software development faster?", "why can't we estimate?" and "How much money should developers make?"   The questions alone caught my attention.  The abstract went on to say that these problems are psycho-social problems and not computer science or engineering problems.  Further: recent studies in "nerd psychology" have shed light on these problems and that ultimately people skills would be part of the solutions to the questions he posed.

This seemed like a prefect keynote to me for a couple reasons.  First, it was completely platform-independent.  One of the goals of the MADExpo organizers was to create a conference that would appeal to any kind of developer.  The problems that James calls out are common to developers in Ruby, PHP, .NET or any platform. They apply to DBA's, web site developers, line-of-business developers, mobile and hardware dev's.  

Second, it was a topic that would give attendees something-to-think-about.  As I've followed twitter traffic for conferences that I haven't been able to attend, specifically CodeMash in 2008 and 2009, I noticed that most of the buzz was around sessions that had no code - or even no slides.  I'd learned of people like Joe O'Brien at EdgeCase for what was an apparently amazing session called Refactoring the Programmer.  (If I recall correctly, this break-out session was so popular they created a repeat time slot on the fly so more people could see it.)  I knew of Gary Short, but read countless posts on the greatness of his Technical Debt session (which I've now managed to miss in multiple states over a couple years.)  I also heard great things about Mary Poppendieck's keynote.  These things aren't unique to CodeMash (though they do a very good job of it).

I've been struck by talks on refactoring, design patterns, failing, writing - even unit testing - that were independent of technology and could benefit any developer.  I've seen sessions like this at CodeCamps in Raleigh and Richmond, at bigger conferences like CodeStock, and even larger conferences like Advisor DevCons back in the day.

My point is this - while developers need to learn to use their tools better, they also need to learn how to make themselves better.  This keynote promises to shed some light on ways we can make ourselves better.

The Unknown

I don't mean to imply that it was my idea to ask James to give his session as a keynote instead of just a breakout.  Many of the organizers were intrigued by this abstract and I'm pretty sure that Steve Presley was the first to tweet about it.

We threw around the idea of using this session as a keynote, but unfortunately, none of us knew who James Ashley was.  (Sorry James!)  We also didn't know if he was capable of delivering a keynote - or even if he was a good speaker!

We Googled and Binged him and learned a little more about him.  As luck would have it, he was presenting a Kinect Hacks 101 session at the Atlanta .NET user group and Andrew Duthie was going to be in Atlanta the next day. Andrew was able to talk to one of his colleagues that knew James. They were introduced and now we have a day-2 keynote.

James Ashley works for RazorFish and is part of a really cool team.  Check out http://emergingexperiences.com/ to get an idea of some of the stuff they're doing with Natural User Interfaces.

The full abstract for our Friday morning keynote is below.  You can learn more about James Ashley and his other MADExpo session here:  http://madexpo.us/Speakers/jamesashley.

And don't forget to register!

What Recent Breakthroughs in Nerd Psychology Can Teach Us about Software Development.

The young science of software development is plagued by seemingly irresolvable mysteries such as:

1. Why hasn't the proliferation of software frameworks and tools made software development go any faster?
2. Why does the obsolete technology we abandoned five years ago always eventually reappear as something new and trendy?
3. Why do developers find it impossible to predict how long a task will take until it is completed?
4. How much should a developer be paid for a mythical-man-month of work?
5. What is this fear of “coupling” that all software architects seem to exhibit?

Contemporary research reveals that these deep problems cannot be resolved within the traditional limitations of Computer Science because they are ultimately not engineering problems. Instead they are psycho-social problems precariously situated at the nexus of Boolean psychoanalysis and Gestalt parapsychology – and they need to be treated as such.

Recent breakthroughs in nerd psychology and aberrant psychology have shed light on these issues. We will explore the latest neuroscience of perceptual gorillas and mirror neurons in order to help explain the salient features of nerd psychology and how it makes software developers good at parts of their jobs but at the same time bad at other things.

Remember, you have people skills. This lecture will teach you how to draw on those skills to start thinking back inside-the-box in order to become a more effective you.

*You might have seen a schedule or a blurb advertising three keynotes, but as we started to synchronize schedules and travel plans, one fell through.  Truth be told, we're glad to have a little extra breathing room in the schedule.

MADExpo is coming to Hampton Roads, Virginia

If you've been on Twitter and follow anyone in the Mid Atlantic .NET community, you've no doubt seen tweets about a new conference coming to the area June 30 and July 1, 2011.

A group of great community-minded folks have been percolating this idea for quite some time and officially got the ball rolling earlier this year. Joel Cochran (famous for his Blend sessions, BlendSIG and great fuel economy metrics) suggested that I might be interested in participating since I've been involved with conferences as part of my work at Geeks and Gurus.

As things turned out (not quite in an everybody-stepped-back-while-I-stood-still way, but almost) I'm now the president of the non-profit that is organizing this event. We have a great team of people working on various aspects of the event and I'll highlight them and the work they are doing in future posts in this blog, which I plan to use to provide some of the inside story and enhanced details of the event as we continue to get closer.

Our goal: The Mid Atlantic Developer Expo will bring together hundreds of software professionals, hardware enthusiasts, and students for a 2-day event like no other.

Our plans currently include:

• 72 breakout sessions covering a variety of topics related to .NET, Ruby, MongoDB, NUI, Agile, Testing, SQL Server, SharePoint, Best Practices, Soft Skills and more.
• 2 Keynotes.
• HTML 5 Camp, sponsored by Microsoft.
• MADKidz - a one day track specifically dedicated to kids of various age groups.
• Hacker/Maker space with demos running all day long.
• Vendor Sessions for our Gold and Silver sponsors providing in-depth opportunities to learn about available products.
• Exhibitors showcasing relevant tools and resources.
• Networking opportunities.
• A great location to hang out and relax after the conference is over.

Over the next many days, I'll be blogging about the specifics of several aspects of the conference including:

• The Hotel Breakfast (really)
• Dining Options for dinner on Thursday and Friday
• Keynotes
• Hotel
• Amtrak
• Airports
• MADKidz
• Stuff to do in the area after the conference
• More...

We're expecting to have a great time. We know the location and content are going to be great.  Please join us.  You can register here.