Reminder that if you're registered the Orlando Code Camp is tomorrow. If you're registered and plans have changed, please cancel your registration. There's a ton of people on the wait list hoping for a seat at this free event.
I'll be at the Code Camp speaking and representing End to End Training. For the past few events we've been raffling a 22" LCD monitor to drive some traffic to our table rather than giving away a lot of smaller stuff, this time we've got a different prize - a One Laptop Per Child Laptop. I posted briefly about it last year and when they had a buy two get one promotion (one goes to a child, one goes to you) for $400 couldn't pass up the chance to see it first hand. It's a little smaller than I expected, the menuing system seems very nice, and they have a good assortment of software already loaded. At $200 each compared to perhaps $500 for a 'real' laptop not sure I'd buy one for home, but if the price really does drop to $100 I think it gets a little more interesting.
The raffle is business, but it feels like a little good karma to be giving money to something that might make a difference. Imagine what the world looks like if they distribute a couple million of these to people that previously had no computer and now the entire internet is there for them - we could see sweeping change in underveloped counties in perhaps a single generation. Closer to home some lucky .Net programmer is going to win this tomorrow and my challenge to them is to write some software for it (it runs Linux!) and write about the experience, and maybe encourage someone else to try by that effort.
