Late last year I was contacted by the organizers of MCE Conf and was asked to speak. Since it fit within my schedule (which can be its own challenge these days) I accepted without thinking too much about it.

Shortly after my acceptance I had heard that there was some controversy surrounding the conference about a comment made by one of the organizers who had attended another conference. After reading up on the controversy I figured; “oh well, how bad can it be?”

The short answer? It was amazing. I absolutely loved every minute of the conference.
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I’ve been using StackOverflow nearly since it started back in 2008. I remember when it first started there didn’t seem to be much going on and so I forgot about it for a time. Then, one day, while searching the interwebs for an answer to a programming question, SO was the first hit in my search results. At that point I went back and started using it regularly–not only to find answers, but to offer my own experiences and expertise to help others. It’s a great site and I have nothing but high praise for its founders, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. The entire StackExchange network is an impressive engineering achievement. (more…)