Back from MeshU 2008
I’m back from a good day at the inaugural MeshU conference and wanted to write down some notes and impressions about the sessions both for my own reference and for anyone else who was interested. I’ve never been to an event to like this so I don’t have any basis for comparison but I assume the fact that I’m interested in coming back next year is a good sign.
It was interesting to have to choose between three concurrent seminars, especially when they were grouped into career-oriented streams. Although I would have expected that the Developer stream would have held the most appeal, I ended up in two Management stream sessions and one Design one. I’m not sure what that means…
Turning the Tables: Moving Beyond Relational Storage with Avi Bryant (Development Stream)
I’ve never really worked with any sort of data storage structure beyond relational databases so I was interested to not only hear that it was being done, but that it was being done by some of the biggest players in the industry. This seminar introduced some of the methods and systems that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are using and making available to handle massive stores of information. Unfortunately for me, integrating these systems happens at a very low level in the application stack so the information wasn’t of any immediate practical use. That being said, there’s always value to be had in examining uncommon solutions to common problems.
Building and Managing Great Software Teams with Reg Braithwaite (Management Stream)
I’d never heard of Reg Braithwaite before this conference but one of the other attendees I spoke with thought very highly of his blog so I was interested to hear what he had to say. I’m not currently managing a software development team in any formal sense but I felt that insights into management strategies can help team members as much as team leaders.
This seminar ended up being my favourite one of the day mostly because the central elements of the talk resonated with thoughts I had been having recently. While I’ve heard before about specific management processes and techniques (e.g. Agile, XP, scrums, etc…) this seminar wasn’t focused on any one methodology. In fact, Braithwaite argued that while some methods certainly have more merit than others, it was starting with a compelling idea and mission that was paramount to ending up with a great team and, subsequently, a great product. By beginning with a concept that inspires passion and by committing to concentrate on only what is important to achieve the mission, building a great team would follow naturally. There were many more great concepts presented then I can touch on in a short summary but I will definitely be adding Braithwaite’s blog to my feed reader.
“Watch It” – How to Monitor Web Applications with Alistair Croll (Management Stream)
I had a tough time deciding whether to attend this seminar or Leah Culver’s talk on OAuth. In the end I opted for this one and was treated to an informative discussion about both why we should be monitoring our sites and how to go about doing so. Alistair did a great job reminding the audience about the importance of creating measurable goals for our projects and continuously monitoring our performance. The web offers us a unique opportunity to gather data and react to it with a frequency that is unmatched by other media. We don’t take advantage of this ability often enough. The presentation outlined numerous ways that we can be evaluating the success of our projects and the tools that are available to do so; from the free and lightweight to the expensive and monolithic. Of all the presentations, I would suggest that this slide deck be the first one you download. There were a lot of great resources mentioned and Alastair did an excellent job of outlining what options were available for a range of applications.
Building Interactive Prototypes with jQuery with John Resig (Design Stream)
I’m a great proponent of jQuery and was very excited to hear the creator himself discuss the framework and its uses. I had considered that the seminar would probably be aimed at an audience who was less familiar with jQuery than I was but decided to attend anyway. Indeed, the technical aspects of the talk were very basic but to hear about the philosophy and history (and a bit about the future) of the jQuery project from the person who invented it was something special. I also got a good measure of my understanding of how to use jQuery (pretty solid considering I’ve been learning on the fly) and where to go next (utilizing the .end() call for optimization and creating my own plugins).
In the end, I was definitely pleased with the MeshU experience and had some great discussions both in and outside of the sessions.