Now Batting Leadoff for CodeStock…

I am honored to have been selected to speak at CodeStock and will be delivering having my Kanban conversation in the great state of Tennessee. I’m really looking forward to this as I didn’t make CodeStock last summer, and it looks like a great two day event. The good folks that have organized the conference have slotted me in one of the opening sessions on Friday, so we’ll get our Lean on early in the conference.

There are a number of sessions I’m looking forward to, and since mine is over early I should get to a bunch of them. But, as with any regional conference, I’m looking forward to the hallway sessions as well.

If you’re thinking about going, go get registered, it looks like it’s going to be a good time.

“But WebForms did that FOR me.”

While working with the model binder the other day, the statement in the title was made by one of the guys on my team. It’s not an unreasonable statement, but I think it spells out an important distinction between traditional ASP.Net WebForm development and using the new, shiny ASP.Net MVC framework.

The point in question was in posting an object after edit, the id didn’t automatically come through. The model binders do some magic under the hood, and it’s welcome magic in my opinion as I’ll gladly leave Request.Form back with Classic ASP. However, you still have to tell the model binder the whole story, it’s not done for you anymore. (Nor was it done for you before WebForms.)

Solution to our little problem: Stash the object id in a hidden form field. (Yes, I know, right click and view source and there’s my object id.) Once looked down upon in WebForms development…well, other than that one GIANT hidden form field called “ViewState”…the hidden field looks to be making a quiet comeback.

Basically, if you want the model binder to find all the bits to your object, you have to make it available when the page posts. So, it needs to be in the form somewhere.

Personally, I don’t see this as a step backwards, but I grew up in the salad days of request/response. Having to provide that info so you can get it back seems normal. The flip side is also true: if you don’t need it, you don’t have to add it.

The more I work with ASP.Net MVC, the more I fall in love with it.

Back to Indy for NDA

A few weeks back, I made my first trip to speak in Indy at the Indy Code Camp. I had a great time, met some new people, and got invited back to speak at IndyNDA on ASP.Net MVC.

So, this Thursday, June 11, if you’re in the greater Indianapolis metropolitan area and want to learn a little MVC, then I hope to see you at IndyNDA.

Presenting in Findlay this Tuesday

I can’t believe I didn’t get this blogged sooner: I’m presenting “Care About Your Craft: Adventures in the Art of Software Development” in Findlay this coming Tuesday, May 19th.

I’m looking forward to heading up to Findlay for this. I met a few of the FANUG guys at Indy Code Camp this weekend, so I’ve got a few hecklers already primed.

Indy Code Camp Recap

For the first time in my short speaking career, I stepped over my imaginary Microsoft Line and out to another region…alllll the way to Indianapolis. I’ve driven to Memphis to talk, and stay in my region, but never the whopping 3 1/2 hour drive to Indy to see the good folks over there. After this trip, I think I’ll step over the imaginary line a few more times.

First, a big thanks to Dave Leininger for putting on a great event. There were over 200 people at the event, and it seemed all were enjoying themselves. Dave drew speakers from 5 states for the Indy Code Camp, so tip of the hat for getting the word out.

The hallway sessions are always good, but I missed out on a few running Jeff to the airport and back. (And not finding the airport right away didn’t help.) But even with my limited hallway track time, I still met some new folks and talked shop with some familiar faces.

I’m already looking forward to my next foray over the imaginary line that is the western border of Ohio. (Maybe a trip east is in order? :) )

Code and Coffee

After a great day at Kalamazoo X, and a conversation with Mike Wood about his Bitslinger idea in Cincy. Jeff and I had a few hours in the truck headed south to work out something for Columbus, so Code and Coffee was born.

OK, we hatched the general idea…meet at a coffee shop on Thursday mornings, write code. I came up with the name and bought the domain. :)

The idea is straight forward: Show up at our coffee shop of choice, bring a laptop, pair up, and have fun writing some code.

Check out http://codeandcoffee.info/ and join us if you can.

CODoDN Follow Up

First, big thanks to everybody that attended my talk on Kanban at Central Ohio Day of .Net. It was a lot of fun talking with everybody, no matter how many times I got side tracked.

The first request from the talk was a link to Corey Ladas blog. Corey has some great stuff in there, but start with the scrumban post.

Here are my slides. The slides themselves are just to support the talk, but there are notes on each slide.