For those not in the know, CodeStock is an awesome developer event coming up June 26 & 27 in Knoxville, TN. Michael Neel and his crew of dedicated volunteers have outdone themselves in planning two days of fantastic content across a spectrum of languages and technologies.

My small contribution to CodeStock will be facilitating the Open Spaces track. While Open Spaces are best when nothing distracts from participants’ focus on the Open Space itself, I think events like CodeStock offer a golden opportunity to introduce Open Space Technology to a new audience that might not otherwise learn what it has to offer.

This hybrid approach to Open Space Technology requires some compromises that purists may find distasteful. That’s okay, I can take the heat. I know from experience that the benefits far outweigh the negatives in taking this path.

The organizers of CodeStock are so committed to making Open Spaces a success that the keynote on the first day of CodeStock will be the opening circle for the Open Spaces track. This approach will insure that all attendees are aware of what Open Spaces has to offer and how it works. This will allow them to make an informed decision about whether to participate or not.

For those not committing to the Open Space track, there is an array of sessions offered including Saturday morning’s keynote by the always impressive Josh Holmes. Everyone should leave this event with new ideas and approaches to consider and apply to their craft.

CodeStock isn’t all business, however. Much of the value of a conference is in networking and idea sharing with peers. We have a number of social events planned in the evenings to give ample opportunity for casual learning.

Thursday evening, anyone interested can gather at Mellow Mushroom on Campbell Station Rd. at 7:00 pm for a community dinner. This is typically a time when there would be an exclusive dinner for speakers, but CodeStock is about bringing developers together and exclusivity doesn’t fit with that ethos.

Friday evening from 7:00 – 9:00 pm we will have the CodeStock Social at the Ed Financial training center. There will be multiple XBoxes and various card and board games as well as light refreshments provided. This event will offer interested attendees a destination after dinner on Friday evening.

Saturday evening there is no official CodeStock social event. CodeStock ends at 6:00 pm on Saturday. There is an unofficial event, however. All interested CodeStock attendees are welcome at my house from 7:00 until ???? Saturday night. We will provide finger food, but guests will need to bring their own beverages (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

I need to stress that the after-party at my residence is not an official CodeStock event. It is merely a conveniently scheduled event for CodeStock attendees. Find me at CodeStock for directions and other details.

Often, conference attendees prefer to stay at a common hotel for ride sharing and networking advantages. When people ask about lodging this year, I recommend the Holiday Inn Express on Campbell Station Rd. for its value/quality/location balance. Honestly, there are lots of good hotels at the Campbell Station, Lovell & Cedar Bluff exits. Pick one and join us for CodeStock.

At the time of this writing, there are 46 tickets left for CodeStock. You will not find a greater opportunity for learning and networking in the field of software development for $45 anywhere. I’m certain that this event has something unique to offer. Don’t miss out!

++Alan

I enjoyed the little fable of Who Moved My Cheese when I read it years ago. While I didn’t find it new or life changing, I liked the message that we should always be ready for new things. Even though I no longer eat cheese (I went vegan this year), I try to be prepared for when the metaphorical cheese starts moving.

Yesterday, my manager and my team lead sat down with me in a conference room to tell me that my contract had been cut from the budget as of May 1, 2009. I was not surprised at all. I had been asking about the status of my contract for over a month. My client had lost nearly half a billion dollars in the first quarter of 2009. I could read the writing on the wall.

Still, I had been lax about preparing for the transition. It is easy to be lulled by the familiar. As a result, I had to scramble to update my resume last night and get the word out that I was looking for a new opportunity. I was better prepared than I have been in the past, but I’d still like to keep my resume more up to date.

I’ve already had several leads come my way from my Twitter tribe and the extended developer community. If I have any down time, I expect it to be brief. If you have the time, please review my resume and provide any feedback or suggestions in comments or using the contact link at the top of the blog.

++Alan

The Ohio user group tour last week was a success from my perspective. I had a blast sharing some ideas and talking to friends. The feedback that I received was very positive as well.

I put the slides on SlideShare here.  

I am especially pleased that Scott Walker took the time to record video of my talk in Columbus,OH. The video is embedded below. Enjoy!


Alan Stevens - Coding In Public from Scott Walker on Vimeo.

Cheers,

++Alan

This week, I'll be traveling around Southern/Central Ohio giving talks at User Groups and at least one corporate office. The schedule is:

• Tuesday, March 24th 6:00 pm Cincinnati .NET Users Group location
• Wednesday, March 25th 6:00 pm Dayton .NET Developers Group location
• Thursday, March 26th 6:00 pm Central Ohio .NET Developers Group location

Here's the abstract to my talk. I'll elaborate on the content more below:

Come learn about the idea of deliberate practice as applied to the craft of software development. Alan Stevens will perform (less than) amazing feats of coding and he will do it for your enjoyment in real time.

OK, I admit, that's a pretty lame abstract. The explanation of the lameness is that I didn't really know what my talk was about until a few days ago. I've had a lot of ideas in my head that I've been trying to put together into a consistent theme. It was only after explaining to my wife recently what I wanted to talk about, that I saw the unifying theme.

And so, dear readers, I present you with the unifying theme of my talk this week:

In order to get better, you must be willing get worse.

This means that if you want to constantly get better, you have to be willing to suck, at least for a while.

So, come to my talk if you want to learn how to suck with gusto, and as a result become a better developer. If enough of us take this approach, we might just improve the industry, at least a little.

See ya' in the Buckeye State,

++Alan

On a recent trip I had my eyes opened to the phenomenon of sexual harassment in the IT industry. I don't know why I was so surprised, but I was. It broke my heart to discover that friends of mine had to put up with treatment that I thought only occurred in bad HR training videos.

Before I unpack my thoughts on this issue I feel I must issue a disclaimer. I'm a man. I've been guilty of sexual harassment to some degree in my life. I do not want to give the impression that I am above this issue. I enjoy making comments laced with double entendre that are probably more than a little offensive at times. Only now, I am more aware of and sensitive to these situations than before.

Here is what I observed. I was sitting next to a female developer in a hotel lobby in the evening during a multi-day conference. We had just met that evening, and I was enjoying our conversation. We were both sober, while many of those around us were not.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a loud and drunken man, whom I had met briefly the night before, appeared. He made a few comments to the assembled group, then reached in his back pocket to pull out the envelope that the hotel gives you with your room key cards. Apropos of nothing, he hands the envelope, containing a key, to the lady next to me and says "my room number is written on there. I expect to see you in my room later."

He then walked away while she tried unsuccessfully to give the room key back. After she sat back down, another male developer on her other side, in apparent sarcasm, said "you took somebody's room key. You're such a whore!" This pushed me past my tolerance and I yelled at him "Dude, over the line!"

While this brief scenario doesn't indicate a trend, it did spark a series of conversations with several women in my circle of contacts. I discovered through these conversations that it is a nearly universal experience that similar inappropriate scenarios happen on a regular basis. What was especially disturbing to me was that the women couldn't believe that I was surprised by this.

I consider the people I interact with professionally to be my community. I believe fundamentally that we have to take care of one another so that we can all succeed. To discover that members of my community were regularly tolerating treatment that I would not put up with for an instant was mind blowing to me.

I learned that rather than viewing men as neutral peers on first meeting, the women often view us with suspicion and caution. It is as though we are all potential assholes in their eyes, guilty until proven innocent. This led me to second guess many interactions I have had with women developers, wondering if they suspected my motives.

It seems to me that the women in our industry are swallowing emotional poison every time an harassing interaction takes place. They appear to have too high a threshold of tolerance for bad behavior. The lady involved in the situation that prompted this post told me that she couldn't speak up because she would then be seen as a bitch and would lose business because people wouldn't want to work with her. Here are some quotes:

I just shrug off certain comments/advancements, because being in IT I feel like I need to be “one of the guys”, so I take it and move on.

That's what i hate - having to keep my guard up in order to respond professionally, because there's this expectation that i have to respond in some way, either by being offended or going along with the joke and showing that i'm cool, etc.

I've been plenty naive, falling for "yeah sure we're just friends" or "no I didn't mean anything by that" lines. After enough lost trust in people, I've probably become more aware and/or suspicious.

Protesting too much gets you nowhere except labled in one of various negative ways. In which case, you HAVE to pick your battles, and figure out what is truly offensive and worth speaking up about, and ignore the rest. Otherwise you're just the "boy who cried wolf."

This condition frankly saddens me. In discussing these discoveries with my friend Dustin Campbell, he reminded me that as men, we have a tendency to fix and rescue. The issue at hand defies my attempts at immediate refactoring. I asked the women what I could do when I witness an incident of harassment. They suggested that I take the offender aside and talk to him rather than publicly reacting and potentially escalating an uncomfortable situation. One friend made it clear that I should say that I find the behavior offensive rather than come across like I'm sticking up for a "little lady."

Henceforth, if I see anyone pulling any of this shit, I will take the person aside and have a discrete but direct conversation. If it continues, I will call the person out publicly. If it continues beyond that, I'll take whatever steps necessary to inform vendors and clients of the individual's character.

The day after my "awakening", I went to a Women In Technology meeting to learn more. There I heard that retention of women in the industry is at least as big a problem as recruiting them in the first place. The three biggest causes of women leaving IT are sexual harassment, lack of role models and lack of mentors.

When it comes to role models and mentors, there may be fewer women than men, but they definitely exist. I know quite a few amazing women developers. Now, I am even more impressed with these women because of what they have had to put up with as they progress in their careers. I invite all of my peers to join me in making the profession of software development more welcoming to everyone by looking out for your neighbor.

Peace,

++Alan

Thanks to everyone involved in this silliness. You all gave me countless belly laughs this weekend. I can't wait to see what surprises my Twitter Tribe comes up with next!

Stay awesome,

++Alan

This Thursday, I’ll be in Detroit at the MSDN Developers Conference (MDC) where I’ll be facilitating something called the Community Courtyard. The idea for Community Courtyard was spawned while Doc List and I were facilitating Open Spaces at PDC in Los Angeles last October.

I’ve facilitated Open Spaces in parallel with a traditional conference successfully in the past, but Open Spaces struggled at PDC. Doc and I examined what was working and what wasn’t and set about discarding what wasn’t working. When we were through with our examination, we were left with an approach that was inspired by Open Space Technology, but was not a full representation of that approach.

We were approached by Bob Familiar about putting together an Open Space track for the MDC events. We shared our thoughts with Bob and he was totally open to our suggestions. Doc and I tried to name it something trippy like “Parallel Process”, but Bob wisely suggested the more approachable, and descriptive, name of Community Courtyard.

So what is a Community Courtyard? It’s whatever you want it to be. Seriously, when you look at the conference agenda and notice a topic is missing that you are interested in, you can put it on the agenda for the courtyard. Whoever shows up is going to be interested in the topic, so even if you only talk to one other person, the conversation is almost guaranteed to be productive.

Personally, I think of the courtyard as a public speakers lounge. For years, I’ve had fantastic conversations with smart interesting people in the speakers lounge at events. Unfortunately, the attendees couldn’t participate in these great conversations. I want to change that.

I’ll be asking speakers to hang out in the courtyard when they are not presenting, or preparing their presentation. Also, instead of gathering at the front of the room after a session to talk to the speakers and ask questions, speakers can now invite attendees to join them in the courtyard to continue the discussion.

It is my hope that the Community Courtyard become a fixture at developer events big and small. I believe strongly that even the most tightly run event needs to make space for serendipity. We need a place at Code Camps and corporate conferences where attendees can seize the moment and talk with each other about what matters most to them at that moment.

I’ve already facilitated the Community Courtyard at the Atlanta MDC, and I had a blast. I know Doc is facilitating many of the other events. If you haven’t yet attended a MDC in your area, there are still a few remaining:

1/22/09 - Boston, MA

1/22/09 - Detroit, MI

1/26/09 - Dallas, TX

2/23/09 - San Francisco, CA

Come join me in Detroit. If you can’t make it to Detroit, then attend one of the other events. I recommend you do so. The content for these events is top notch, but the people you will meet are even better.

See ya’ in the Motor City,

++Alan

On January 1, I was pleased to receive an email with the subject “Congratulations 2009 Microsoft MVP!” It is nice to be recognized for my contributions to the Microsoft developer community. I’ve made a lot of friends and learned plenty by traveling around and giving talks, as well as helping organize developer events.

If you are unfamiliar with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program, you can read up on it here. Personally, I was overwhelmed by the show of support that I received from my peers when I announced my receipt of the award on twitter.

If you go here you can see what I’m talking about. It goes on for a few pages. I feel a bit like George Bailey in that my wealth and my reward is the amazing group of friends I’ve made.

The MVP award is for the contributions I made in the previous twelve months. I am not obligated to make any further contributions, but who am I kidding, now that I’ve found my Tribe, I can’t seem to stay at home.

Gratefully,

++Alan