Mobile Camp LA

I picked up a free ticket to Mobile Camp LA earlier this week and decided to attend. Overall I wasn't too impressed with the event. It may have very well been the first of it's kind aimed at developers, designers, and business folk. Anyway, I thought the venue was a bit of a mess as many things went wrong.

1. Earthquake drill at 10:15am (slightly distracting, but out of their control-- I understand)
2. A lot of sessions held in a one big open space separated by cloth dividers. Too noisy!
3. Microphone problems-- couldn't hear some sessions at all!
4. Power outages-- no presentation slides or projectors!
5. Cancelations and running behind time (somewhat normal, but there seemed to be quite a few).

Anyway, it was still enjoyable and I shouldn't complain since it was free for me. 

One more complaint in general, here was one session I ended up not enjoying where the speaker was more interested in promoting his own product than talking about technology or problem solving. I just do not like sitting through some kind of product advertisement for an hour.

The interesting thing I walked away with was how many new products/services Adobe was coming out with for not just designers, but also developers. Check out html.adobe.com to see all these brand new stuff. They are definitely pushing the Creative Cloud. Something I'll have to keep my eye on since I use Photoshop and Lightroom pretty heavily these days.

Prashant Sridharan (from Facebook) presenting on Native iOS Development.


Cross-platform MObile HTML5 Apps by Max Katz


SASS/LESS by Jake Johnson






Windows 8 Tablet by Daniel Egan


Backbone with mobile backend by Sid Maestre


Fund Your Start-up by Glang Biscan

SoCal Code Camp at USC

Last weekend I attended SoCal Code Camp held at University of Southern California (USC). Had a good time learning about new stuff as usual. The prizes here are pretty spectacular, but once again I won absolutely nothing. Nothing!

Like the one I went to earlier this year, this one was also a bit heavy on the .Net side of technology with little representation from Android and iOS, and nothing from Ruby/Rails/Java/etc. Not that I'm saying it's the organizer's fault or anything, they actually did a great job. Sometimes I wonder if other tech communities here in Los Angeles care to organize something under one event/banner at all, as each tend to have their own community to care for. Oh well right?



Dylan Campbell, one of the organizers I talk to.


Hattan Shobokshi presenting on ASP.net MVC Topics: The Model Binder




Free tacos for lunch


Prize and schwag giveaway at lunch. There was another giveaway at the end of the day.




Joe Enos on Improving your ASP.NET build and deployment process with build scripts and continuous integration.


Jon Flanders presenting Native iOS programming for .Net developers


Lee Salazar on From Codemonkey to CEO.


Related:

• Pictures from SoCal Code Camp (held at California State Fullerton earlier this year)

Upcoming Summer Conventions

There are some conferences and conventions coming up soon that I'm pretty excited about. So far I'm definitely going to Anime Expo and Comic-Con, as I purchased tickets for those already. Recently announced is the G+ Photographers Conference, which includes a Photowalk on Monday, May 21st. I will most likely make my way up there for that-- about eighty-percent sure I'll go.

I plan to take my photography gear to take plenty of pictures too! It's really fun to check out conventions where loyal fans dress up in very elaborate costumes and show it off. Of course I'm speaking about the latter two listed below.

Google+ Photographers Conference
May 22-23, 2012
Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco, CA



Anime Expo
June 29 - July 2, 2012
Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA



San Diego Comic Con International 
July 11 - 15, 2012
San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA




The above are all in California, but there's a few in Chicago, that I won't be attending, that I  recommend:

Chicago Code Camp
May 19, 2012
College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL



Wizard World Chicago Comic Con
Auguest 9-12, 2012
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Chicago, IL




Another conference I won't be attending this year is RailsConf.

RailsConf 2012
April 23-25, 2012
The Hilton Austin in Austin, TX


Some blog posts and pictures I've taken at previous events:

• San Diego Comic Con 2010
• Chicago Code Camp 2010
• Chicago Code Camp 2011
• RailsConf 2011
• Wizard World Chicago Comic Con 2011

Pictures from SoCal Code Camp

Over the weekend I attended and volunteered at SoCal Code Camp at California State University Fullerton. I had an awesome time, attended quite a few sessions, learned a lot, and met quite a few good people.

Below are some of the pictures. Full set of pictures can be found here.





Mario Harnandez presenting CSS3 for Web Designers- Let's Design a Visually Appealing Website and Grid Systems - Picking the Right CSS Framework for Your Website.




Kim Smith-Rohlfs presenting Working For Startups- What You Need to Know.












Lynn Langit presenting BI/Big Data Futures - Is it really all about the Cloud?


Geek Dinner














Li Chen presenting It is Time to Rev Up your Javascript Skill.




Nuri Halperin presenting Driving Electric - An all Electric Car Info Session and NoSQL for Beginners parts 1 and 2.




David McCarter presenting How to Survive the Technical Interview.


Raffle schwag to be given out at the end of the day.


Everyone gathering around for the raffle drawings.














Volunteers!