So tomorrow I fly out to Cleveland for the 1-hour ride to Sandusky, Ohio for CodeMash. The first CodeMash ever took place last year, and I was very glad to have been a part of it. I had intended to submit proposed talks for this year, but alas my schedule was already a bit full and I honestly lacked the energy to put together the topics I would have wanted to present. I cannot wait to be there, several of my colleagues from Bruce Eckel’s OpenSpace conferences will be attending.

One benefit of being an independent consultant is that I am able to choose the conferences I attend without having to justify it to some management or department head. Most of the things I choose to attend would probably not be approved by an organization that insists on being able to directly relate the entirety of a conference’s content of focus to the attendee’s daily tasks. Still, there are numerous conferences throughout the year that appeal to me, and I can only afford to be unbillable for a certain number of weeks out of the year. CodeMash makes my shortlist, and here are a few reasons:

• CodeMash is a multi-language conference. There’s a breadth of exposure and a cross-pollenation of ideas that are simply not available at single-language events.
• The attendees drawn to such events are typically more open-minded about software development approaches and the fact that there is no “one way” or “one language” for anything.
• The speakers drawn to this type of conference tend to have a perspective that is broader and more in touch with software development realities than insisting on foisting some delusional monocultural vision for their language/platform/tool of choice.
• There’s a strong OpenSpace element to CodeMash, and I have experienced first-hand how amazing and energizing it can be.

So, that is why I am going to CodeMash. Looking forward to sharing my experience with my readers, all three of them.