Expanding my Speaking Footprint in 2012

So one of the things that I plan to do more of this year is presenting at Code Camps and the like.  I’ve presented several times at Utah Code Camp (Spring 2011, Fall 2011), but want to expand my footprint.  So, I’m currently submitted to Boise Code Camp, Chicago Code Camp and MADExpo.  Over the next few weeks/months I’ll see how well my session topics are received outside of the Utah community.  I also plan to submit to Portland Code Camp and Agile Roots this year once their calls for speakers are open.

If you’ve attended (and hopefully enjoyed) previous sessions that I’ve presented, please rate me at http://speakerrate.com/mdclement

The topics that I’ve been submitting (and that I’ll be presenting at Utah Code Camp Spring 2012) are listed below along with the abstract.  I’m looking forward to an exciting year of meeting with developer communities both inside and outside of Utah!

Linq (From the Inside)

Knowing how to use Linq is useful if you're doing any coding using .NET 3.5 or newer.  But have you ever thought about what is going on "under the hood"?

Join us as we dive into the guts of Linq and implement Linq extension methods such as Where, Select, Any, All and Sum.  Not only is it interesting to see what's going on, it'll help you to build better code using Linq.

Code Katas: Practicing your Craft

One of the key values as part of the Software Craftsmanship movement is to be "skill-centric" and as part of that, practicing our skills as software developers is key! The Code Kata format is a coding exercise that is repeated and perfected. It provides one of many ways to practice the craft of software development. We'll discuss the Code Kata format, introduce a few katas and discuss some other practice formats.

I will be guiding the Kata in C# (no previous knowledge necessary though). As this is hands on, to take full advantage of the session have Visual Studio or SharpDevelop installed, NUnit installed (or via NuGet) and an integrated unit test runner (recommend Resharper or NCrunch for VS).

Randori: Group Practice

Looking for a new way to practice your craft? Randori provides a complementary way type of training when compared with katas.

Elements of Randori are: Pair Programming, Pair changes with mechanism (Time box, Ping Pong), Start from scratch, Use TDD, Everyone should be following, Pair should be explaining, Audience gives suggestions only with when Green

An example is at http://vimeo.com/2499540 . This is a hands on session!