As I mentioned last week I drove to Miramar for the South Florida Code Camp, arriving in time for the Friday night speaker party that we (End to End Training) hosted, and spent a great three hours just talking shop. Saturday morning I went over about 7:30 to see how things were going, no line at registration, plenty of people already moving about. Had about 8 sponsors on site, probably more than were web only. Everything started smoothly and host Dave Noderer seemed unstressed - a good sign! I spent a couple hours in the morning heads down on a project I needed to get done, then spent some more time wandering and looking in on sessions. Lunch was the standard pizza & soda, but I saw quite a few hit the on site cafeteria (snack bar?) and I got take out from Subway.
My session was right after lunch, I did my presentation on statistics to a crowd of just over 30. Had some good questions, and more DBA's than I expected - probably half the audience, more than I usually see at a Code Camp. I left to head home about 3:30, it's a long drive and I wanted to get home at a decent time. I had a follow up email from Dave, more than 800 registered, verified more than 650 attended. Truly amazing to get that many people to attend an event, I wish Orlando Code Camp (coming soon!) would grow to that size.
The only negative I heard was a few people got cold pizza, but even they were still smiling. Everything else seemed smooth to me, both as an attendee and as a speaker. Wait - one thing; Dave, next year can we have real half and half and not that yucky powdered stuff?