The sound of no hands clapping

Michael PhillipsWe sponsor a lot of Code Camps around the country, and we like to visit as many as we can. Usually for the Los Angeles area camps we will set up a table and talk to people who are attending and give away some DiscountASP.NET branded stuff.

At camps in the past, people were always saying to us, “You guys should do a session!” so in October of last year we did our first two sessions, “Getting started with TFS,” and “Q & A with a hosting provider.” Both sessions were well attended, and despite some technical problems with Joe’s TFS session, both were a success.

So for the Code Camp in Fullerton this past weekend we thought we would offer up the same Q & A session. At USC in October, we had filled up a small room with about 25 attendees. At Fullerton we were scheduled into a much larger room, and we packed in:

A few people.

Actually, the people in that photo are all us, as the other three attendees had already left.

Mark being interviewed

It was an interesting – and brief – session, as you might imagine. At one point shortly after we began, someone wandered in apparently looking for a quiet place to eat her lunch, but she soon left when it became clear that her Carl’s Jr. bag would be the loudest thing in the room. Another guy left without asking a question, and our lone active participant left after getting his two questions answered.

So it was a smashing success!

We weren’t too broken up about it, considering we were up against some very interesting sessions in the same time slot. It was actually pretty funny, and we hung around in the conference room for a while telling stories about other notable failures we’ve been involved in.

The concept of a Q & A might not be so great for something like a Code Camp anyway, considering the fact that we’re set up at a table all day where hundreds of people stop and ask us questions. No need to sit in a conference room for an hour and a half when you can get your questions answered in a few minutes, up close and personal.

Have we given up on presenting at Code Camps? No way. We have some ideas for sessions that should be a bit more compelling than a Q & A. Hopefully you’ll sit in on one of them soon.

For some reason this picture makes it look like a Blue Man Group convention…

9 thoughts on “The sound of no hands clapping

  1. Acutally, there was another person that physically walked into our room twice looking for the Android session. But the way I interpret the success of our session is that our crew did such an outstanding job at answering questions at our sponsor table that there was nothing left to ask. 🙂

  2. Like I said you guys have some ineradicable content to give about shared hosting, TFS etc. you just need to have a title and description that give people a reason to show up. I will hound you about it next time ;). Thanks again for supporting SoCal Code Camp you guys rock!

    1. We thought two times a charm with our talk but it didn’t quite work this time around. And the other sessions at the same time had some great content too. We’ll keep at it though and we’ll be there to support SoCal Code Camp.

  3. I was actually debating going to your session at SoCal Code Camp but eventually MVC tools, tips & tricks won out. There were really some good sessions on that time slot. I had to make compromises all weekend on what I wanted to see. So I wouldn’t feel too bad about this.

    One topic of interest I wouldn’t mind seeing you guys present on would be writing hybrid applications that leverage Azure services like storage, CDN & ACS while still being hosted on discountasp. Shared hosting is still more cost effective then using Azure compute for my needs.

    1. Thanks for the comment. We have to up the ante on our content to get people to come to our sessions. That’s fair and that’s the way it should be. And thanks for the topic suggestion. We are seeing more and more of this type of hybrid hosting solutions.

      For anyone reading this, please post your suggestions as well.

  4. Sorry the session didn’t work out, but we really do appreciate your sponsorship! Code Camps just don’t work without amazing sponsors like discount ASP.NET. You guys rock!

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