Music City Code Conference - How it All Began

Conception
I started contemplating starting a new technical conference in January of 2013 a couple years after DevLink moved from Nashville to Chattanooga. I noticed relatively few Nashville area developers who had previously attended DevLink were unable to afford attending so far from home.

As I pondered the reasons for starting a new conference, I realized it had very little to do with attending training sessions. The most valuable aspect of technical conferences seemed to be people I met and interaction that took place. I started floating around the idea of creating a conference centered around interaction and registered the domain name DevInteraction.

Initiation
The most important aspects of planning a conference are the date and location so I started investigating venues and creating a calendar of regional conferences. I quickly realized that hotels and convention centers were not only costly to rent, but often implement vendor restrictions which drive the cost up further. There were also very few breaks in the conference schedule where a new event wouldn't compete with an established one for speakers. I decided to focus on work and put conference planning on the back burner.

Analysis
Over the next couple years the conference concept continued to evolved. While presenting at Code on the Beach, I mentioned the idea to the president, Paul Irwin. He pointed out that Nashville is the "Music City" and would make a great location for a destination conference. That got me thinking about all the music related gatherings that take place in the Nashville IT community and how we might include these types of events in a conference.

Fast forward to February of 2015 when John Kellar announced that he had decided to retire DevLink. All of the sudden there was a giant gap in the conference schedule, but we were in the midst of repairing major damage to our house from a water leak and planning an April wedding, so I had no bandwidth to take on a new project.

Design
As luck had it, I found myself with extra free time after the wedding and decided it was now or never to get this new conference off the ground. The previous month I had served as a mentor and judge for an event at Lipscomb, which had given me the opportunity to start a conversation about hosting the conference there. From there the pieces started to fall into place.

DevLink had been held at the end of August and it just happened that Saturday, August 29th was available. I asked for advice from all the conference organizers I knew and most of them suggested starting small for the first year and focusing on quality over quantity, so we decided to limit registration. By the time we hammered out a budget, timeline and other major aspects we were already into late June with just over two months to recruit volunteers, set up social media, gather speaker submissions, solicit sponsors, create a schedule, launch a website, market the event, design shirts and order printed material such as signs and programs.

Development
So that's where we're at now. We have been fortunate to receive guidance from many regional conference organizers (see board members below), but we still need quite a few volunteers and are working on recruiting both sponsors and speakers, but I'm optimistic that we can pull this together and put on a great first year!

Want to help out? Here are some easy ways everyone can help:
Follow @MusicCityCode on Twitter and retweet our announcements!
We also post updates to LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+.

Interested in speaking? Submit a session!
If speaking isn't your thing, we could certainly use your help as a volunteer.
Maybe your company would be interested in sponsoring.

A special thanks to our board members for their invaluable advice:
John Kellar (DevLink Founder & Executive Director)
Chad Green (Code PaLOUsa Conference Chair)
Chuck Bryant (Plugged In Board Member & BarCamp Organizer)
Jonathan Mills (Kansas City Developer Conference Director)
Lee Brandt (Kansas City Developer Conference Director)
Phil Japikse (Cincinnati Day of Agile Founder)
Jeffrey Strauss (St. Louis Days of .NET Principal Organizer)

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Engaged? Make it so!

Sir Patrick Stewart helped me ask Mary Carnahan to spend our lives exploring the universe together and pronounced us ENGAGED at Dragon Con!

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Growing IT Talent in Nashville

This week's Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce newsletter asked for input to help Nashville grow. Being in IT, the first thing I thought of as a barrier to growth is the lack of top IT talent. Middle Tennessee colleges and universities churn out a staggering number of IT students, however the skills taught in class only go so far towards preparing those students for growth in the workplace. For many, this growth is spring-boarded by attending conferences where they receive exposure to new technologies, training in vital skills, and connect with other professionals outside their organization. Conferences draw the best and brightest from surrounding states as both presenters and attendees, which provides a unique opportunity to market Nashville as a city of potential employers as well as establishing a reputation of excellence.

Below is the comment I submitted to the Chamber of Commerce. Please post any comments or suggestions you might have at the bottom of this article or tag me on twitter (@gainesk).

The technology sector seems to be driving much of Nashville's growth, however our current workforce is having trouble keeping up and may hinder continued growth. While various special interests have formed strong communities around specific technologies and products, Nashville is sorely lacking in regionally recognized technology focused events focused on educating and connecting both local and national talent. Local government needs to get more involved in helping to facilitate these events by making venues available and connecting organizers with sponsorship. The result will be a stronger reputation for Nashville as a technology hub on the National stage, higher standards for education and training of talent, and attracting top talent from other cities by showcasing what Nashville has to offer.

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Build a Customized MVC eCommerce Site in 1 Hour (workshop)

For those of us who have spent most of our careers building business applications, the prospect of creating an e-commerce storefront can be quite daunting. Not only do you have to deal with calculating tax, estimating shipping and accepting payments, but employees need a way to manage products, discounts and marketing content. Thankfully, there's an open source e-commerce solution written in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC5 named nopCommerce that provides all this functionality and much more.

This workshop was designed to ramp everyone up on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, introduce advanced concepts used throughout the site such as Dependency Injection, and walk through the process of working with nopCommerce. By the end of the evening everyone should have first-hand experience building plugins that can be packaged and sold online.

Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.
A list of past and scheduled speaking engagements can be found here.

To check availability or discuss presenting a specific topic, I can be reached by email or phone.

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Three Reasons to Hire Consultants

Consultants are more than just developers with an hourly rate. In addition to honing their technical skills and staying abreast of the latest technology, successful consultants must develop valuable soft skills which are often sorely lacking in developers.

Time Management

When your client receives a bill for hours worked, the understanding is that each of those hours were spent doing something constructive for the client. Consultants are held to a much higher standard of productivity and must be self-motivated. Successful consultants learn to control their time by setting goals, defining and prioritizing actionable items, delegating duties, limiting distractions, and organizing information while managing these aspects within multiple projects or clients.

Problem Solving

In consulting, problem solving is where the rubber meets the road. Before a solution can be discussed, the consultant must first understand the problem and the conditions required for a successful solution. Consultants must have the ability to understand the client's industry and their role in it, the company's culture and expectations, business objectives, and processes. Only then can they consider the cost, risk and benefits to recommend a solution.

Communication

The ability to effectively communicate is by far the most important skill for an effective consultant.

Written Communication

The role of consultant inevitably involves the creation of estimates, statements of work, user stories, specifications, findings and recommendations, plans, trip reports, and hand-off documents. It's expected that these documents, as well as other written communication, be clear, succinct, orderly and unambiguous. They also have to write for a wide variety of audiences ranging from IT professionals to the CEO. This means the consultant must understand the interests of that audience and emphasize the relevant information. Some audiences will need additional context to understand complex topics while others simply need an executive summary. Often written communication involves skills beyond words, such as the creation of charts and diagrams. A good consultant determines the best method to convey their message to the desired audience.

Verbal Communication

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, three out of every four people suffer from speech anxiety. Consultants are required not only to overcome their anxiety, but to also hone their verbal communication skills by articulating and controlling their volume, pace, pitch, posture, facial expressions and eye contact. They must convey confidence without being arrogant and exhibit authority while remaining open to suggestions. Verbal communication involves not only speaking, but listening as well. Knowing when and how to ask questions is key. In order to craft the most effective solution to a problem, the consultant must understand the difficulties of their clients from multiple perspectives and present a solution that satisfies all parties.

While these skills are not unique to consultants, they are often more developed in those who make a living providing consulting services. What soft skills do you think are most important? Share your thoughts in a comment below.

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Glasshole Alert!

Today I finally got my hands on Google Glass and I am impressed. It's a pretty slick device with an even more impressive design. The device itself is light weight and pretty stylish (especially with the shade attached). It is also pretty comfortable while wearing, definitely more comfortable than my reading specs. 

While the app selection is minimal, the apps that are available are pretty descent. Allthecooks and google play music are my favorites right now. There are other apps (facebook, evernote, cnn, etc.) I have yet to give them a try but will soon. 

One of the things I really like is how good the speech recognition is. It's really accurate, the first time. I have not had to repeat myself or yell for it to pick up my commands. It is really responsive too which is another plus for me. there is nothing worse than a lagging app. I am also able to speak at a normal speed and cadence and not feel/sound like I'm trying too hard to make it register. The touch pad is also nice, very responsive and pretty intuitive. 

Now hear come the caveats. Ah, the battery life, our age old friend has reared its ugly head within this realm of beauty. But I went into this expecting less than great battery life so I'm not all that disappointed. But i'm confident that Google will get this worked out as the device matures. Sunlight, the image within the prism gets washed out in direct sunlight. The shade helps a bit but it still wasn't great. Overall I am really pleased with the device and look forward to giving some good feedback to the Glass team and keeping you all up to date on my findings. With that said, it's time I get my glass out of here...

Oh, one last thing....(You see what I did there?).... Leave a comment below for a chance to receive an invite to the Google Glass program. With the invite you still have to pay $1500 for the device. Also,

Just a reminder that all Glass Explorers must:

• Be US residents
• Be at least 18 years old
• Provide a US shipping address or pick up their Glass at one of our locations in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles

We will pick a winner on Friday Dec 13, 2013!

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