August 2008 Archives

I'm often inspired by the 37signals crew. For those that aren't familiar with the company, they are the creators of Ruby on Rails as well as their online service offerings that in my opinion are best-in-class in each of their respective domains ( Backpack, Basecamp, Highrise ).

I posted about the .NET MVC app In/Out before, but unfortunately my blog database took a nosedive and it was one post that I did not write in google docs as is my usual routine, so I have no backup.

The project is posted as open-source (OS) under the MIT license on CodePlex.  Although the releases and source have been downloaded over 100 times and the project has almost 1000 views (I know, in the grand scheme of things this is nothing, but let me bask in my first OS project please), today I received my first bit of feedback on the project.

It was from someone looking to update the project to work with MVC Preview 4, the project is built on Preview 3, and they had an issue they wanted to discuss.

This being my first OS project, it was exhilirating to receive feedback like this on something that I created outside of my workplace that another person found worthy enough to spend their time tinkering with and ultimately maybe using themselves.

I think I might have just caught the OS bug.

More on In/Out .NET, Scubuddy (the project that is absorbing most of my free time ATM), and everything else I am doing doing/thinking of to come.

In general BarCamp (BC) III was slightly less exciting for me than BC II was.  I don't know if it was due to the fact I was now a BC veteran and it was not as fresh of a concept for me as the first experience was, or if my feeling that there were fewer compelling sessions was actually true.

There were definitely fewer sessions for developers this year.  Last year we had the Natuba guys discussing Django and Microsoft made an appearance to show off Silverlight.  On the whole there was only one dissapointing session that I sat through, but I did end up leaving early (~3 p.m.) and last year I was there until they shut the camp down.

There was an interesting FaceBook application discussion and catching the last 45 minutes or so of a discussion on the case for social media for business was also interesting.

I finally had the opportunity to meet Mark Nathan (twitter: @marc1919), but otherwise there were far fewer connections that I made this year.

One major change that I found disappointing (I know others loved it), was the decision to cater lunch from Papa's BBQ.  I remember some great conversations last year as the developers at the Camp went out together and ate lunch, that didn't happen this time.  In the end, one can't complain about free food, but I really enjoyed last year's lunch session.

On the whole, I enjoyed myself immensely and I am looking forward to BarCamp (IV, ?).  Particularly I enjoyed the happy hour the night before at the Caroline Collective.  I met more people in the Houston start-up community in one night than I had in the past year.