Held at Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio, the CodeMash conference brings together different aspects of development, business and technologies. Briteskies Developer and IT Guru Derrik Nyomo attended for the third time this year in order to expand and update his knowledge on various methodologies and practices. The four-day event, which welcomes members of the industry as well as their families, features a handful of speakers each day from which attendees can pick and choose.
Derrik’s first session, and one that he found most interesting, was DevOps, a new buzzword in the business, which focused on the methodology of development and the cycle for pushes. The concept of DevOps is a cycle of integrating development and operations into one system. For example, by engaging DevOps, a certain app that requires constant updating went from a 6-8 week time table for builds and integrations to creating a plan that allows for six pushes a day.
The DevOps session also introduced Derrik to Chaos Monkey, a testing methodology used by Netlfix that tests how a system responds to malfunctions by turning off servers at random, causing other servers to pick up the slack. This provides the security of knowing that the servers will still work even if the provider goes down.
Derrik also enjoyed his first real exposure with the open-source document database Mongo DB, which improves the quality, flexibility and speed of flat table apps.
Other notable sessions included Own Your Own Career-Advice from a Veteran Consultant with David Giard, which, for Derrik, reaffirmed the notion of treating customers with courtesy and respect, and the keynote address about architecture and culture with Ann Pendleton-Julian.
Each day of the conference winds down with a mixer or live entertainment, and the last night includes the CodeMash party with exclusive water park hours that allow attendees to interact with the speakers and enjoy the waterslides.
From the social opportunities to the developments presented, CodeMash provides an occasion to bring together members of a rather competitive industry. As Derrik said, “Even though sometimes we as coders compete on code languages, etc., at CodeMash everyone comes together to give the pros and cons about things they have worked on over the years.”
Derrik is already looking forward to next year’s CodeMash. For more information on how you can join the fun, visit codemash.org.
Check out our full review of CodeMash 2013 by clicking here.
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