Daniel May

DDD stands for DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper – a UK-based developer conference based in Reading.

It’s the first (but by no means the last) conference that I’ve ever offered to speak at, put forward a session or actually attended. Naturally I’m very excited to be in a place with 300+ like minded developers, it’ll be a first for me. It’ll be great to put faces to the twitter names and to meet some of my idols.

I put forward a session for DDD8 because I’ve always been interested in speaking at a conference. For me, I’d love to have this opportunity to show what I know, what I’m good at, what I have a passion for.I saw this at DDD and decided I’d just go for it. I’m by no means an expert in ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, Mono or many of the other things that got voted into the actual sessions – so my proposed session was about something I did have a hell of a lot of exposure to. Learning. I have been a self-taught programmer since the age of 12 and have read countless books. One thing I knew I needed to do was to make one point clear throughout the entire session – the fact that what one person may find an easy way to learn, an easy way to progress can be completely different for someone else. There’s no solid answer to the question “What’s the best way to learn?”.

The only thing we can do when faced with such a question is explore the different ways of learning, and attempt to figure out the most efficient and the one that suits each person – we’re all different (which seems to have it’s upsides and its downsides respectively).

Unfortunately my session was not chosen for DDD8. This hasn’t put me off of the idea as I know a few people must have liked it as I got some positive feedback from those who are attending. I’ll still be getting the session material together and putting it in for as much publicity as possible. I believe that talking at a conference like this has the potential to make a name for yourself.

DDD8 is being held in Reading on Jan 30th – this Saturday.

As for the choice of sessions I’ll be attending, I think I’ve narrowed it down to Real World MVC Architectures by Ian Cooper, Commercial Software Development by Liam Westley, C# 4 by Jon Skeet (unmissable), Not everything is an object by Gary Short, and A Developer’s guide to Encryption by Barry ‘the irish lanky git’ Dorrans.

I have to say I’m wholly looking forward to a Saturday full of geekiness. Followed by Pizza.

I figure I should really use a blog.

I read a lot of blogs myself (I’m actually signed up to 63 feeds via Bloglines (which is excellent by the way) and I find it an excellent way not only to keep in touch with the developer community but also to keep informed and share newly found technologies and information.

So here I go again, I’m giving this whole blogging thing another shot. Hopefully I can attract your attention enough for you to stick around for longer than just a few minutes, and with any luck the things I have to blog about will capture your mind and maybe even teach you a few things.