PDoTDD: It’s a Wrap! Thank You Edition (Part 1/2)

On Saturday, we concluded our Pablo’s Days of TDD event here in sunny Austin, TX.  Over all, I think it went really well. All the feedback I personally heard was positive and we asked people to fill out evaluation forms and, from what I saw, they all had good things to say and lots of good suggestions for making the next one (if we can ever manage it) even better.

Thank you everyone who attended. You made it worth doing and I hope you got a lot out of it and are able to take something back to your regular day-to-day routine and make it a little better somehow.

Just a reminder for everyone, all the materials are online at our Google Code project. You currently need Subversion to grab it. We’ll work this week on getting a ZIP’d up version of the repository so you can just download it without needing to install an SVN client.

In Part 2 of this post, I’ll recount what went down and talk about going forward. For right now, I want to get sentimental and drop a few thanks on some people:

I’d like to call out the sponsors and individuals who stepped up to make this thing happen.

Sponsors (in no particular order)

• Microsoft (hopefully you know who these guys are)
• Provided facilities, XBoxen for the Friday night entertainment
• Unasked for:  Provided 2 extra copies of Office 2007 Ultimate and 2 VS 2008 Pro copies to give away as prizes!
• J Sawyer, Phil Wheat, and Chris Koenig all helped out and went above and beyond, usually without even being asked!  The office staff at the MTC here in Austin were very helpful and went out of their way also.
• TOPAZ Technologies (scientific research and laboratory management software)
• Pat Guider, the President of TOPAZ, without even being asked, donated the physical lab books (paper, ink, binding, etc) as well as tons of pens and graph-lined notebooks
• Ray Houston (who also happens to be a Los Techies) worked overtime to get all the lab books done and bound.
• Bruce Denham – Graphic Designer/Artist/Wizard helped create the cover page and tweak a few things in the lab and kick-off powerpoint presentation
• Shiftwise (Healthcare workforce management and compliance software)
• Ross Barbieri, stepped up and volunteered to help sponsor this event and asked how he could help and where
• Aaron Murray, brought tons of drinks and breakfast tacos for Saturday and arranged all the logistics for that.
• Shiftwise went above and beyond everything we asked them to do.
• TekSystems (technial recruiting services)
• Russell Labay (and his partner whose name I don’t have, please forgive me) for arranging lunch, drinks, and snacks on Saturday
• The Rand Group (high-end technology consulting services)
• Gregory Long (who also happens to be a Los Techies now, but wasn’t when this all started) – for Pizzas and drinks on Friday night, as well as printing the eval forms
• JetBrains (they make really cool developer productivity tools like ReSharper for Visual Studio, TeamCity for Continuous Integration, dotTrace for .NET app profiling, etc)
• Britt King, for donating 4 ReSharper licenses to give away as prizes

Special Individuals (in no particular order with a chronological bias, perhaps)

I know I’m going to miss a few people here, so let me just first say “I’m sorry, I’m a heel” preemptively.  Thank you to:

• the families and significant others of the organizers who had to put up with the late nights, stress, and being gone Friday night and all day Saturday!
• Gregory Long – for kicking us in the butt to get this thing going again. He’s now a Los Techies, but he was pushing us long before that.  He helped get things moving again and we would like to specially thank you.
• Ray Houston – he’s a Los Techie, but he really stepped up near the end and worked long hours working on source code, lab materials, printing and binding the lab books, not to mention everything he did the day-of.  Also, I’m told his wife drove across town to help bind the booklets! Thank you!
• Eric Hexter and …
• Joe Ocampo and …
• John Teague – All three of you: for working late nights and helping to get the lab materials done, calling sponsors, helping to arrange everything, leading labs the day-of,
• Derik Bailey – for driving all the way from Temple, TX on Friday AND Saturday, for spotting me $40 for a memory stick, and helping out all day Friday and Saturday getting things going, pairing with folks and generally helping out all around
• Kevin Miller – for coming out, stepping up without being asked, pairing with people because you care, helping to clean up, helping to film one of the sessions, and all the other things I didn’t catch you doing. Thank you for supporting the community and stepping up where action was necessary!
• Jeremy Miller – for helping out on Friday lead some discussions in the advanced room and in the hallways and such
• Scott Bellware – for donating an MSDN Premium subscription (yes, the full subscription deal! wow!) and helping out at the end with one of the sessions I was leading
• Jimmy Bogard, Joshua Flanagan, Jason Meridth and the entire Los Techies crew who pitched in here and there before and during the event and generally made the whole process go easier