Yesterday was the Atlanta, GA code camp. We had a pretty good turnout, a good venue (DeVry University) good meal of hamburgers, hot dogs, spicy grilled chicken made outside on the grill (as the good lord intended).

I attended last year's code camp and was really blown away at how good a free one-day conference could be. But this year was different, instead of sitting by and enjoying the benefits, I helped contribute by giving one of the presentations. "Diagnosing Code Smells and Refactoring Them Away".  I present in conference rooms, and have given training to my team before, but this was people I didn't know. Now I hope to know a few of them, as I thought we had some good Q&A going before the end of the session.

As this was my first "community" presentation, I hope it was acceptable. If you were there, please let me hear from you.

Speaking in Public Lessons learned:

1. Look around before you begin to see if some wonderful person has left you some water near the rostrum. (I found it after the presentation, and needed it almost immediately upon starting.)
2. Wait until the crowd has arrived before beginning. I started at 5 minutes after the start time, but 5 minutes later, the class size over tripled, all at once... I guess one of the other classes overflowed, and they sent them away. :-) Anyway, I simply backed up, and made the on-time attenders suffer through my first 5 minutes again (although slightly less embellished).
3. Don't code on the fly and try to invent new demos in front of the crowd. It will expose your inability to type. (usually I type quite well, strange)