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Yet another technology conference season is upon us!

There a many great events being planned and some are already announced.

Here is a short list of events and links to their websites. Save this link, as I hear of new events I’ll make sure to update this blog post to add them.  Just a reminder that most of these events are in the “Heartland District” as defined by Microsoft which includes Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee but I’ll add events in other neighboring states as well. Don’t mistake me, this isn’t just a list of Microsoft events either! Any technology event in the area that I hear about I will list. If you know of any drop me a line and I’ll get it added!

February 2010

Grand Rapids Code Retreat - Grand Rapids, MI - February 6th, 2010 (Free)

March 2010

Roanoke Code Camp - Roanoke, VA - March 13th, 2010 (Free)

Southern Maryland Give Camp - St. Mary’s City, MD - March 19th - 21st, 2010 (Free)

Lansing Give Camp - Lansing, MI - March 26th - 28th, 2010 (Free)

April 2010

Pittsburgh Code Retreat - Pittsburgh, PA - April 3rd, 2010 (Free)

Philadelphia Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise - Philadelphia, PA - April 8th - 9th, 2010 ($325.00)

Philadelphia Code Retreat - Philadelphia, PA - April 10th, 2010 (Free)

Kalamazoo X Conference - Kalamazoo, MI - April 10th, 2010 (????)

Great Lakes Ruby Bash - Lansing, MI - April 17th, 2010 (????)

Pittsburgh Code Camp - Pittsburgh, PA - April 17th, 2010 (Free)

May 2010

Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition - Columbus, OH - May 7th, 2010 ($25.00)

IndyTechFest - Indianapolis, IN - May 22nd, 2010 (Free)

June 2010

CodeStock - Knoxville, TN - June 25th - 26th, 2010 ($25.00)

July 2010

Ann Arbor Give Camp - Ann Arbor, MI - July 16th - 18th, 2010 (Free)

Cleveland Give Camp - Cleveland, OH, July 16th - 18th, 2010 (Free)

August 2010

DevLink - Nashville, TN - August 5th - 7th, 2010 ($100.00)

September 2010

Ohio Linux Fest - Columbus, OH - September 10th - 12th, 2010 (Free)

October 2010

erubycon - Columbus, OH - October 1st - 3rd, 2010 (~$300.00)

November 2010

NO EVENTS

I can’t stress enough how much fun these events are. Not only can you learn a lot of things but you get a chance to hang out and socialize with some of the top developers in the area. I encourage all developers to try to attend at least one local event. You will not regret it!

The Cleveland GiveCamp 2010 has been announced and is currently looking for charities and volunteers!

About GiveCamp

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

The Cleveland event will be held July 16th - 18th, 2010 at LeanDog located at 1151 North Marginal Road Cleveland, OH 44114.

So please check out the Cleveland GiveCamp 2010 and sign up to help if you can!

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt

This is another book from Andy Hunt and the Pragmatic series. I can’t emphasize enough how great these books are.

Where as in Pragmatic Programming they discussed patterns and practices to improve your developer skills this book takes a step back and is looks at how your brain works. It’s a very interesting concept and one I suggest developers think more about.

The book as the title implies covered two areas:

The first part goes over the thought process and after reading this book I gained so much insight into how my brain is wired. Andy does a great job of explain how a brain processes thoughts and stores memories in terms of metaphors of computers and technology.

The second part covered the many techniques for learning and helps walk you though examples of the pros and cons of each method. Again this was very insightful as I have never really thought much about how I learn and what processes are best for me.

Thanks to this book I now have a few different options for learning that I plan to try to find the one that works best for me to retain and use knowledge.

Go pick up a copy and sit down. It was such a fascinating book and I ended up reading it from cover to cover in only a few days. Once you get into it, if you are anything like me you will be so enthralled you won’t be able to put it down.

If you ever have a need to save a windows servers file shares & settings here’s how to do that. This is handy if you happen to be transitioning to a new file server and you have a lot of shares that need to be transferred. You could always do it by hand but this way will save you a lot of time!

Open up your registry on the server and navigate to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares]

Right click on the Shares folder and choose export

You will now have a .reg file that you can copy and install on the new server and have all the file shares and security settings ready to go.

One note to remember is this only works if you setup the file shares identically on the new server. You have to keep the drive letters and folders matching the old server.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas

This is one of my new top developer books. Far be it for me to tell you want to read or not read but I feel this is a must read requirment for any developer.

The topics that are covered range from dealing with “code rot”, software that is outdated and breaking, to the importance of testing.

The beauty of this book is that it isn’t your standard technology book. You won’t read this and learn a new language, framework or tool. In the book they cover so many important topics that are about being a better developer in general. Many of these issues are ones that people never think about yet if they did could improve the quality of their software and the happiness of their clients.

I plan to share this book with all my coworkers and I hope once you read it you will do the same.