Last week, I went to my first in-person tech event for 2022 – CodeMash. These are some of the things I caught over the first couple days.
Serverless Solutions with Azure
On Tuesday, I caught the first part of Brian Gorman’s serverless pre-compiler. I was excited to catch this session, as his workshop was based on the Serverless Architecture Microsoft Cloud Workshop, which I have contributed to thanks to work. It was neat to see a presentation and workshop built around materials I am quite familiar with. It was also good to see that I could chime in on support with one of the demos. I could only stay for the first half due to other commitments, so I missed the hands-on lab part. However, knowing the material and catching Brian’s first part, I suspect it went over well.
Spies, Secret Messages, the Internet, and You!
This was the first year that I attended a KidzMash session, as I had my family with me the entire week. I have seen Matt Williams present at other events, and having talked with him extensively over the years, I was excited to see that he and his kid had this presentation. Together, they talked to kids about things such as good and bad passwords, ciphers – including the Caesar cipher, and one-time pad encryption. The kids made paper cipher wheels and created messages. As Matt explained one-time pad encryption to them using 2 decks of cards, I immediately thought of public and private keys. I really liked the handout that they had for the kids, explaining the concepts, with illustrations done by Matt’s kid. I’m glad I caught this session.
Learning Feedback with LEGO: The Building Blocks of Giving and Receiving Feedback
When it comes to the science behind giving and receiving feedback, I knew Arthur Doler would be giving a great precompiler session. In this session, he walked us through types of feedback and feedback triggers. As part of his presentation, Arthur points out that when we have data, we use it to interpret a situation, which can lead us to apply labels. When we apply labels to things, there are consequences. I like how he drew this out.
He had us pair off with people around us, building things with LEGO blocks, and exchanging feedback with each other. Each exercise had deliberate instructions for each person in the pair, with the note that they aren’t to share those instructions with the other person. In one set of notes, someone would have to build {something} – with a particular thing or attribute in mind. The other person’s build notes were usually something different. In the giving feedback part of the notes, the person would have to give feedback based on whatever was presented. Arthur had the exercises built deliberately to really hit you in the right places and drive the point across. I have to give a shout-out to Michael Richardson and Ilya Gotfryd, who were great partners at giving feedback.
Conclusion
I was nervous about going back to events in-person. However, I was excited to be able to catch these precompiler and KidzMash sessions in the first couple days of CodeMash 2022. It was good to see how KidzMash brings technical to the kids. It was also good to be back learning in an engaging environment. Stay tuned for the next posts where I cover the sessions I tackled in the session days.
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