Jeff Atwood was one of the talks I was really looking forward to and he delivered. His talk was about writing and whether writing was arguably more important than coding. The case in point he had was to make us think of any famous programmer we knew and how we knew them. Did we know them because we'd read their code or their prose? It's pretty clear that for nearly everyone the latter was the case. His conclusion was that no matter how much code you write, no matter how awesome it is, it never happened if no one saw it. And the best way to get people to see it is to write about. He encouraged us all to write a blog, if only for writing practice.
His talk was very edutaining and had a very Kathy Sierra style to it. Very little text (usually only a quote from someone) and mostly just one big image per slide. It works extremely well. You convey a message with your image and then the focus is back on you. Your audience isn't constantly pulled between what you're saying and the summary (or worse, copy) of what you're saying on the slides so it's a lot easier to stay in sync with the presentation.
By the time Jeff was done I was dead tired. I headed home for a shower before heading out with CUSEC people again. We went to a club and I decided to have nothing but girly drinks (between shots of whiskey). I got really disappointed when the bartender didn't know how to make an appletini. I did manage to try a martini and a couple of other 'tinis before I left kinda early because I could barely stay awake.
I can't wait until 2009.
For more CUSEC 2008 related reading here's some blog posts I found:
If you wrote a post about CUSEC I'd love to read it and link to you here. Just leave a comment or send me an email at smokinn@gmail.com
Wow man, who needs the audio or video of the talks, when you gots it all in your head! Keep on spreading the good word! Cheers.