A recent blog post about conferences and diversity sparked some good conversations. I posted a lengthy comment to the article (twice) and it never showed up,for whatever reason. I wanted to post it here, on the NCDevCon blog to keep the conversation going.
If NCDevCon owes allegience to any particular group, then it is allegience to the attendees. We vow to provide the most timely, relevant and well delivered information possible.
Below is the comment, as submitted to Mule Design.
=====================================================================
I'm from NCDevCon (NCDevCon.com) and we are having our conference this weekend (May 22-23).
As it happens, our speaker mix is 20% female / 80% male. We have representation across race. Our gender/racial mix at least mirrors the ratios found in technology. Perhaps we are a little bit more diverse, but it is hard to quantify.
We have a reasonable percentage of speakers who are new to speaking at technical conferences. So I'm proud to be a part of a conference with a more normal mix of gender and race.
I feel it is important to say, our speakers weren't chosen for their race nor their gender. We chose our speaker line up based on the timeliness of material and professional reputation. Based on those qualities, we ended up with a fairly diverse roster. I am absolutely confident our speaker line up will deliver engaging, informative material in an entertaining manner.
Having served on a number advisory committees in the past, I can say the percentage of speaker submissions from females is rather low, much lower than 20%. I can't speak for race, since we don't ask for race, nor is race as easily inferred as gender from a name.
As a conference organizer, I'd welcome more submissions from any and all people. Race/gender aren't important to us. We want to deliver the best learning and thought-provoking experience to our attendees.
-Sincerely
Dan Wilson
-NCDevCon Leadership-
=====================================================================
Discuss as you wish in the comments, we'd like to hear what you have to say...
As we mentioned in our earlier post "5 Bucks Is Change - NCDevCon Official Charities", NCDevCon has teamed up with 5 Bucks Is Change in order to 'pay it forward' and help support a few local charities.
We're excited to announce our second supported charity is Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
To show our support the badge lanyards this year will be hot pink!!
The Komen Promise: to save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality of care for all and energizing science to find the cures.
Since 1997 Susan G. Komen for the Cure® NC Triangle Affiliate has awarded more than $8 million to local community programs in North Carolina.
We maintain the philosophy of “what is raised here stays here” with up to 75 percent of net proceeds being used for local programs in our 19 county service area, and 25 percent used to fund breast cancer research globally.Last year, Komen NC Triangle Affiliate was able to invest more than $2 million in breast cancer education, screening, treatment and research, including $1.18 million in community health grants right here in our 13-county service area (now 19 county service area). More than 20,000 people in our own backyard were served with funds from last year’s Race. It is so much more than a 5K walk. It’s our community coming together to end breast cancer forever.
Learn more: http://komennctriangle.org/
So how much is two days of top notch presentations and hands-on training going to cost you?
Absolutely nothing if you want... but we do have lunch available each day, as well as some one-of-a-kind NCDevCon shirts available.
- Lunch; $15
- Shirts: $15
Drinks, snacks and coffee are free throughout the day. We will also have our official charities accepting donations.
Our two chosen charities:
* Susan G. Komen for the Cure
* Conservator’s Center Inc.
Please consider making a donation while at NCDevCon!
NCDevCon is an entirely volunteer based event - we make no money!
So for $45 you can come to NCDevCon and fill up your stomach, get a cool shirt, and fill up your brain with the latest ColdFusion, Flex and Web technologies!
Please Note:
Please bring CASH to the event. We are low-tech and cannot process credit cards or checks!
Dennis hails from Australia but has spent the last 12 years in Charlotte, North Carolina working as a software engineer for Carolinas Healthcare System, the third-largest non-profit healthcare system in the United States. Most of his work there has involved using ColdFusion to construct Web application back-ends and integrate them with a variety of enterprise clinical and administrative systems. Dennis gets most of his open-source kicks as an active contributor to the Model-Glue framework, but he also contributes to other open-source CFML projects such as ColdSpring and Validat (a validation framework from Alagad, Inc).
Dennis' Sessions
MVC for the Rest of Us
The Model-View-Controller pattern (MVC) is one of the most widely advocated patterns for developing Web applications, and there are a number of quality MVC frameworks for CFML available today. However the adoption of MVC within the CFML developer community seems quite low compared to the developer communities of alternative platforms.
This presentation will cover the high-level benefits of MVC for CF developers, some key concepts of MVC as it is often implemented in CFML, and some simple techniques to show how both back-end coders and front-end designers can quickly benefit from MVC. Many of the presented ideas will also be demonstrated through a simple example application written in Model-Glue, a popular MVC framework for CFML.
About NCDevCon
NCDevCon, a free conference held May 22-23, 2010, presents topics by
internationally known speakers on ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, AIR and
general web development technologies.
Organized by the Triangle Area
ColdFusion User's Group, associates, and sponsors and held on Centennial
Campus at NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Free
registration includes access to all events at NCDevCon.
We are excited to announce Intergral has donated copies of it's software to give away at NCDevCon!
FusionReactor is a professional tool for monitoring ColdFusion application servers - FusionReactor is 2 products in 1 - first, it gathers, visualizes and logs, detailed server metric information, necessary to help you troubleshoot and analyse your ColdFusion Servers and applications. Second, it pro-actively monitors your ColdFusion production servers, giving you instant server status and maintaining the ongoing health of your server via 'unattended monitoring and crash protection' features.
FusionDebug is an interactive step debugger which runs on Adobe ColdFusion 6.1, 7, 8 and 9 as well as Railo 3.1. FusionDebug lets you see what's happening in your application as each line of code is being executed. Use FusionDebug to set breakpoints, step over, into, or out of code, inspect variables (across different scopes), and watch expressions.
Learn more about Intergral at: http://www.fusion-reactor.com/
This is just one of many prizes to be given away. Register now for your chance to win.
Greg has over 15 years experience designing, creating, producing, and delivering training, technical documentation, marketing communications, and/or e-learning content for complex products for start up and Fortune 500 companies. He recently moved his consulting company, Renaissance Information Design, to the Triangle from the San Francisco Bay Area, in order to escape the “500/500 Club” ($500,000 to buy 500 square feet of property). With his lower mortgage and more leisurely time, he hopes to be able to resume his hobby of playing Elizabethan Renaissance music on the recorder.
Greg's Sessions
Writing for the Web
Those of us of a certain age were taught from high school through college the three paragraphs, pyramid, essay style, which consists of the Introduction at the top (with the infamous TOPIC SENTENCE), the Body in the middle, and the Conclusion at the end of the essay. Writing for the web uses a different paradigm, with an inverted pyramid, that requires the writer to state his most important ideas first. At Renaissance Information Design, where our motto is to “make known what is unknown,” we will show you why and how the web has implemented this model, and what it means for those who produce content for online display.
About NCDevCon
NCDevCon, a free conference held May 22-23, 2010, presents topics by
internationally known speakers on ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, AIR and
general web development technologies.
Organized by the Triangle Area
ColdFusion User's Group, associates, and sponsors and held on Centennial
Campus at NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Free
registration includes access to all events at NCDevCon.
Class Overview
This hands on session will introduce attendees to Flex 4. Whether you’re an experienced Flex 3 developer, or new to Flex and Flash altogether, we’ll get you started with Flex 4 development using Adobe’s Flash Builder.
Attendees will learn what Flex is, how it relates to the Flash platform, and differences from Flex 3 to Flex 4. Then we’ll get hands on with creating our first Flex application – first by creating a barebones application. Then we’ll connect this application to data over the web, and finally we’ll skin and style the application.
Requirements
What you need to have ready for the session:
- Flash Builder installed – mandatory
- WAMP, WAMP, or LAMP installed - optional
Introduction
- What is Flex
- Flex 3 vs Flex 4
- Development in the Flash Builder IDE vs the Flex SDK
- Exploring Flash Builder (hands on)
Creating a Barebones, No Frills Flex App
- Basic Components (Buttons, Sliders, etc)
- Layout Containers
- Data Binding
- Data Grids/Lists
- States
Connecting to a Data Source
- Creating Connections to Data
- Using our existing data binding to swap out our Array collections and use a live data source
Styling (putting the frills in our no-frills app)
- Advanced CSS
- Skinning
- Importing FXG from Illustrator (Illustrator not required, FXG will be provided)
- Creating a custom item renderer
- Transitions and Effects
Publishing
- Debug/Build Release
- Convert to AIR application
About The Instructors
Ben Farrell currently works as a Flex/Flash developer at Digitalsmiths in RTP, NC. Digitalsmiths powers the digital media for today’s leading Hollywood studios, broadcasters, distributors and publishers including Warner Bros., Telepictures and TMZ.com. Prior to Digitalsmiths, Ben worked at 360KID in Boston, MA where he helped to create educational games and applications for top publishers like Pearson and McGraw Hill as well as top children’s companies like Nickelodeon Jr., and Sesame Street earning multiple awards including two Emmy Nominations.
Adrian Pomilio has been developing web based applications since 1997, with a recent focus on the Flash Platform in the past three years. As well as Flex Adrian has also reached a high level of expertise in Air, CSS, Javascript, various server side languages, data modeling, GIS, and various technologies. Most of Adrian's work centers around transportation and logistics, specifically the North American Railroad industry. Current Employer: Railinc, Cary NC.
Bucky Schwarz is a 26th level web developer specializing in ColdFusion, JavaScript, CSS and semantic HTML. He built his first website when he was 17, an all Flash affair for a video game clan he was a part of. He currently works for Open Intelligence, in Raleigh, NC, where he builds database-driven web applications for the NIH and NIEHS, as well as web sites and web applications for private local businesses. He believes a strong user interface and a good user experience are just as important as correct logic and the right data. He graduated from The Florida State University in aught six with a degree in computer science. In his spare time, he enjoys video games, beer, skateboarding, and spending time with his fiancé, Emily and playing with his dog, Lando.
Bucky's Sessions
JavaScript: Taming the Beast
We've all interacted with JavaScript at one time or another. Luckily, John Resig gave us the gift of the jQuery and insulated us from JavaScript's hideous warts. In this presentation, we'll examine the warts, and provide the laser that is capable of burning those warts away. We'll talk about OO in JavaScript, JavaScript's strange quirks, and how to harness the power of JavaScript for when you need to do more than use jQuery for a one-off effect.
About NCDevCon
NCDevCon, a free conference held May 22-23, 2010, presents topics by
internationally known speakers on ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, AIR and
general web development technologies.
Organized by the Triangle Area
ColdFusion User's Group, associates, and sponsors and held on Centennial
Campus at NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Free
registration includes access to all events at NCDevCon.
Sunday morning we'll be kicking off NCDevCon with a Pecha Kucha session. While we could go into a lengthy and complex explanation about what Pecha Kucha is, why don't you jut show up?
We guarantee you'll:
- Have fun
- Learn something
Sunday Morning Pecha Kucha Schedule
- Stress - Doug Hughes
- It's not your language. It's your culture! -Adrian Pomillio
- The Evolution of the Air Cooled Volkswagen - Jim Leether
- Life can be hard, or life can be easy - Jason Long
- 5 Bucks Is Change - Janet Kennedy