CodeStock is a community developer conference held in Knoxville, TN.  I went this year and it rocked!

I had the opportunity to share the great work my team did via a talk titled “.NET from within: CLR 4 and beyond”, sat on a panel of Women in Technology, and spent a lot of time with an exciting bunch of developers – whom I now call friends.

The one word I would use to describe CodeStock is community.   Even the keynote topic was community – ending with impromptu, heart-felt stories from the audience on how this developer community impacted their lives -- like getting jobs or first speaking opportunities.   The attendees and speakers were not a set of people sent to a conference by their bosses -- they wanted to be there.   They spend large amounts of their time educating and spreading the word to other developers.  They run user groups, write blogs, tweet… and they have tons of followers.  The amount of passion and camaraderie was quite impressive.

Sharing knowledge took a close second. Not only were the sessions great, there were open spaces and plenty of hallway conversations.  Michael Neel, who started CodeStock 3 years ago, clearly knows/learned a lot because he put on a great conference! He even ensured there was a forum to share how to plan and run a conference.  Michael sat on a panel with others who put on conferences to share the tips and tricks. 

CodeStock intentionally doesn’t have a speakers’ lounge.  This was my first time speaking at a conference, so I’m not sure what it is like with speakers lounges.  The lack of a lounge was great because I got to spend all of my free time talking with and learning about the conference attendees. 

I got some great feedback and got to learn a bit about some of my customers.  Hopefully this was just the beginning of my involvement with the awesome folks out in the field.