The last few days I spent at the DotNetFringe conference in Portland. Considering this was the first time this conference has been run it was executed spectacularly well.
Off To A Great Start
The opening keynote was done by the one and only, Jimmy Bogard who delivered a candid history of his experience working on OSS projects, including both the successes and failures. Jimmy delivered a wide range of sage advice regarding how, why and when you should open source projects.
Photo Credit: Bar Arnon
It Just Got Better
The next talk I watched was from Amy Palamountain who delivered the trifecta of presenting great technical content that was entertaining and wonderfully polished. The consensus among the speakers I spoke with right after her presentation was that we all needed to go and work on our talks.
Spreading The HTTP Love
My talk was related to the open source projects I've been building over the past few years related to creating and consuming HTTP APIs. It is quite a challenge to deliver any amount of depth in a technical subject in 30 minutes, but I do appreciate the format as there were much less schedule conflicts than at conferences with many tracks.
Photo Credit: Immo Landwerth
Sunshine In The Morning
Day two started on another bright note for me with Gemma Cameron talking about the changes DevOps has made the potential future of NetOps. It was both informative and entertaining, a perfect combination. And I'm looking forward to a chance to use Bitstrips in my own presentations soon!
Photo Credit: Gemma Cameron
A Chance of Showers
Next up was the DotNetRocks Open Source panel. I think my tweet from the beginning of the session is the most succinct summary I can come up with.
Kudos for @@dotnetfringe for picking a panel of devs that include people who have opinions critical of Microsoft. Diverse opinions are good.
— Darrel Miller (@@darrel_miller) April 14, 2015The challenge with diverse opinions is that there can be disagreement. And there were. The panel discussion was an accurate reflection of the .net OSS community as a whole. Some people spoke too much, some spoke too little. People showed their biases. Yup, people were human.
Photo Credit: Immo Landwerth
The .net community has come a very long way, and it still has a long way to go. I do think in general we are finally all moving in the right direction. But there is a history of pain and anguish behind us. We need to focus on the future without forgetting the past. There is nothing worse than making the same mistakes twice.
Rainbows Follow Rain
DotNetFringe was a strange name for a conference, with an even stranger logo. It came together in a short amount of time and made an unusual venue work.
The conference was full of amazing people, great talks and overflowing enthusiasm for the future of .net OSS. I look forward to the next one.
It was a bold play, but it paid off. Look out for the session recordings becoming available soon, they will be full of great content.