It's a wrap on another outstanding New England Code Camp. Chris Bowen did a fantastic job organizing and managing the event. I don't think even his predecessor Thom Robbins could have done a better job. (Did I just say that?)
LINQ seemed to dominate Code Camp 8, but it was much more than simply a variety of FROM, WHERE and SELECT statements. Lots of great information was presented on what's happening between LINQ and the CLR, with IEnumerables, extended methods, anonymous types, Lamda expressions and all of that good stuff. Tim Ng from the Microsoft Visual Basic Compiler Team kicked off Code Camp with two LINQ sessions showing the pre-compiler LINQ experience in Visual Basic, with Richard Hale Shaw (I'll just call him "Smooooth") providing two similar sessions on Sunday morning but in C#. Both sessions from both guys were FANTASTIC!!!
Fritz Onion was there and gave a great introductory session on using Silverlight in ASP.NET, with Chris giving a great overview of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 to conclude my weekend. There were other great sessions I wanted to attend, but the only other two sessions I was able to get in were from the Vermont Geek Sensation Dave Burke who gave two illuminating talks, one on CodeSmith and a second on Community Server's Chameleon Theming Engine. I don't think we'll be seeing any presentations on Community Server again, as its too esoteric for the Code Camp geek crowd. His "Everyday CodeSmith" talk was a big hit though. I enjoyed it a LOT.
The Saturday night party in the Waltham Westin lobby was more subdued than usual. Those primarily responsible for the absence of usual riotousness were Mark Mullin and Julie Lerman. Chris did everything in his power to make it a festive event and was a wonderful host, but there was only so much even Chris could do to get the party to a shock-rockin' pitch. Mark "Make It Neat" Mullin failed The Collective by ordering local Sam Adams draft brew instead of his signature scotch "neat," which meant I was joining him in the Sam Adams instead of going toe-to-toe with bourbon on the rocks. No shouting matches over the metaphorical symbolism of Superman hitchhiking a ride in blizzard conditions back to his Ice Home in Superman II like there were at Code Camp 7. Pity. And all Mark's fault.
But the biggest Waltham Westin Code Camp 8 party spoiler was Julie Lerman, who was in her normal place at the center of the geek roundtable (well, actually the square table) but with her laptop open and working on Sunday's Entity Framework presentation! The last time we saw a laptop opened in earnest like that at Code Camp Party Central was Sam Gentile who did it two Code Camps ago. Naturally, comparisons between Sam Gentile and Julie Lerman were quickly drawn and speculations ensued. Was Julie Lerman really a Sam Gentile clone, but with naturally curly hair???
At least I personally benefited from the get-together, becoming best buddies with Fritz Onion...well, maybe not best buddies, and, okay, maybe Fritz wouldn't recognize me if he ever saw me again, but we had a long conversation...okay, maybe we didn't have a long conversation, but whether you believe me or not, I got to say hello to Fritz Onion!!!!
Oh, I almost forgot! At the Saturday night party we also had the special treat of hanging with David Krumholtz from the CBS hit drama Numb3rs. My favorite role of his was actually Bernard in the Santa Claus movies. But anyway, David was going incognito, and we respected his wishes, of course, treating him just like one of us geeks. He wanted us to tell people he was a .NET User Group leader from Syracuse. "Call me Andy," he said. Sure, man, whatever you say! That David Krumholtz is such a crack-up.
In other Code Camp geek news, the guy with the parrot showed up briefly on Saturday, but thankfully without the parrot. I also found out who "lurch" is. Heeh-eh-eh, heeh-eh-eh. Bill had dinner at The Naked Fish without me, on purpose. I found out Gary's true age. And Jason Haley was missed by all.
That's it. I think I covered all of the important stuff. SEE YOU AT CODE CAMP 9!!!!