This is my first time attending the Twin Cities Code Camp and first impressions have been great! Here are the presentations I’ve attended so far today:

Increasing your Productivity with Visual Studio by Jeff Klawiter
I haven’t developed in Visual Studio for a number of years but this talk was still very engaging. Seeing all of the tips and tricks in Visual Studio has inspired me to do some research on customizations available for Flex Builder 3. The specific key commands may be platform specific but the concepts defiantly apply across development tools. Jeff’s blog: http://www.jeffklawiter.com/

DemoFEST: SQL 2008, AJAX and the Virtual Earth SDK by Mike Benkovich
Very nice demo about integrating Microsoft Live maps into a browser and applying geographical data from a database to the map. This looks like something that can be integrated into AIR using the HTMLLoader. It was very interesting to see data visualization from within SQL Server 2008. More information about Mike and his work: http://www.benkotips.com/

Building Better Applications with UX Principles by Corey Miller
Everyone can benefit from effective UX Principles. This presentation was about bridging the gap between designers, developers and users. I believe that user experience is very important in the success of both webpages and desktop applications. One of the main problems we have had is getting clients to ‘buy in’ to spending the time and money up front on UX. Corey has blog posts about UX here: http://www.coreysportfolio.com/?tag=/ux

This code camp has been pretty Microsoft heavy but the principals in these presentations definitely apply across platforms. With the wide variety of topics, great people, and free admission you really can’t go wrong attending #TCCC. I would recommend this code camp to any developers in the Twin Cities area.

More information can be found here:
http://www.twincitiescodecamp.com/