About SoCal Code Camp
Wow where do I start, I received an email via the Contact
page that I did not like but the reason I did not like it was that it asked a question
that had been asked in the past I that I never got around to answering so here it
goes…
This was the email:
Your web site asks us who we are, when we register. But that's quite one-sided!
I see the list of presenters, but who are you, the organizers? What's your reason
for doing this? Presumably it's not a free event ... why aren't your prices shown
on the web site? I do rather feel like you're trying to sell us a pig in a poke!
And my response was:
"we" are Daniel Egan, Michele Leroux Bustamante
& myself (Woody Pewitt) who
decided SoCal needed this type of event so we made it. Many others help with the
event but we started it and keep it going…
The event is free for the attendees, there are costs but we have managed to get
sponsors to cover everything we have ever needed. I will also make a post on the
site about this but I hope you come and enjoy and to get the most out of the event
speak and participate!
Thanks,
-- Woody Pewitt
Developer Evangelist | Southern California & Hawaii
blog.pewitt.org
| www.socalcodecamp.com
e-mail response w\i 24 hours | v-mail response w\i 8 hours
For full disclosure I did edit the preceding a little but this was the full just
of the conversation and the reply was quite nice and it looks like we have a new
participant in Code Camp!
But as often turns out to be the case my response was not the full story.
The full story as best as I can recall is that shortly after I took the job of Developer
Evangelist in SoCal I went up to the first Code Camp in the west (that I knew if).
It was in Portland Oregon and it WOWed me! If you search (Portland "code camp 1.0") you will find a lot about it.
While I was there I met Daniel and he was equally WOWed we both loved to see how
the community had come together to execute a great event. Daniel and I got in contact
shortly after we got back and started to plan how we could do a Code Camp in SoCal.
I can’t recall who decided to talk to Michele but whoever’s fault it was a great
idea but Michele was not satisfied with just a Code Camp she wanted a Rock & Roll
Code Camp!
And now we are about to do our 6th (as of June 2008) Code Camp each of them getting
bigger and bigger, live music, dinner party and some of the world’s best speakers
on the planet!
That is how the ball got rolling but while Michele, Daniel & I continue the pre-panning,
wrangling of sponsors, over all logistics and running this web site we get a ton
of help from a lot of people! On the day of the event we could never do all that
needs to be done so we have had the good fortune to have
Mark Rosenberg and Andrew
Karcher help us with coordination of all the volunteers.
I hope this helps anyone who wants to understand what this is all about understand
and who is behind it, please if you have questions let us know.
If you have supported Code Camps in the past thanks so much and we hope you keep
helping out. If you have not supported, spoken, attuned or volunteered please do
so, trust me you will get more out of it than you put in!
Update (not written by me): Code Camps continue to be extremely popular events
that draw amazing speakers and large audiences in Southern California. In building
on the success of the Fullerton and San Diego Code Camps run by Daniel and Michele
as well as the Central Coast Code Camp run by Robert Hope, Art Villa and Janet Chung are taking lead in bringing Los
Angeles County its first Code Camp at the University of Southern California. We
look forward to another great event this year?