Blogs

I plan to integrate these links into the site a bit better later but I did want to mention that the first set of Strange Passion talks from Blueberry Hill were recorded (unbeknown to me) by Bryan Williams. He was kind enough to edit and upload the videos for public consumption and you can find those four talks here:

http://strangeloop.blip.tv/posts?view=archive

I put together a little wrap-up with pictures and some other info that you can find right here.

I've finished tabulating the Strange Loop ratings and I'm pleased to announce the Strange Loop 2009 Rock Stars!

The top rated speaker was easily Charles Nutter with an average rating of 4.79/5. Several other speakers also garnered high ranks across the board and are the 2009 Rock Stars:

1. Charles Nutter
2. Ken Sipe
3. Jeff Brown
4. Bob Lee
5. Alex Payne
6. Matt Taylor

Many other speakers also got excellent ratings and in general I am very, very pleased with how the conference schedule turned out.

I created a tumblr link blog for Strange Loop where I'll post any blogs or other referring links of interest in case you want to stuff that in your feed reader:

Strange Loop link blog

I have slides from most of the talks and you can find them on this page. A few more are still coming in and will show up there as they do.

There were a number of video and projector issues at Strange Loop but we managed to have every presenter give every presentation. I have to call out Hudson Akridge though who did a heroic, even EPIC presentation job. His talk was heavily code-based and required his laptop, which only worked while connected directly to the projector.

Thanks everyone for attending Strange Loop! I hope everyone had a great time and will be able to attend next year for Strange Loop 2010. I had a great time putting things together. More than anything else, I am grateful for so many fabulous people I met along the way.

I want to put out a special hell yeah to the volunteers - these people stepped up and really delivered. Time after time, they figured out what needed to be done and did it before I even knew about it. THANK YOU volunteers!

For some reason, the 1 pm center theater slot seems to be a strange attractor for chaos. Anyhow, that slot will now be Bob Lee's talk on the Java reference API and garbage collection, which is an excellent deep dive into areas that are scary or wholly unknown for most Java developers.

Check out The Ghost in the Virtual Machine: A Reference to References.

Due to logistical issues, there are two last-minute speaker changes (session topics are the same though). Jesse Wilson will not be able to make it out for his talk on dependency injection so Bob Lee will fill in instead.

Also, Steve Hawkins will not be able to make it for his talk on Teiid so Ramesh Reddy will be doing that one instead.

Strange Loop is sold out! I didn't think it would happen, but the conference is full with 300 people registered. It should be a great event, hope to see you soon.

I've updated the session schedule if you want to plan your conference: Session Grid.

Check out Strange Loop merchandise here: Merchandise.