IndyTechFest is teh awesome!
I was privileged enough to be a speaker alongside some other ridiculously awesome regional speakers (and even had a few of them IN my presentation!)… star struck having @dburton, @timwingfield, @skimedic, and other community leaders like @myotherpants and @maggielongshore in the audience. I am truly humbled. Thanks to the organizers for allowing me to practice my teaching, and thanks to those that sat through my talk for supporting me (and also, thanks for the positive feedback from those I talked to afterwards!). [Side note: If you want to see my slides: https://github.com/jonfuller/presentations/tree/master/mongo/]
The best part, however, had nothing do with any presentation at the event. It had to do with the amazing conversations we had in the Open Spaces area hosted by @alanstevens. I hung out there ALL day (except for when I was presenting), and got more out of any one open space topic than I have at entire conferences before.
We talked about Ruby on Rails, IronRuby, Public Speaking, Technical Speaking, Running a User Group, Linchpins, Alt.Net, Software Craftsmanship, DVCS (hg and git specifically)…
I’ll pause and let that list of topics sink in. For me, that list is like a holy grail of a developer conference.
Most of this was deep discussion about the topic at hand by some great minds/leaders in the area. All of the aforementioned folks plus @jayharris, @alanbarber, @jademason, @garrinmf ,@arktronic, @browniepoints were together having these conversations, and it was really exciting (at least for me) hanging out with these guys and learning so much from them.
For me, this year, IndyTechFest was about the people and the interactions I had with them. What was it for you?
I can’t wait for next year.
