For the sixth consecutive year Stout sponsored the CodeMash software developer’s conference in Sandusky, OH. CodeMash v2.0.1.2 was held January 11-13 at the Kalahari resort.
Stout’s booth was the scene of constant high activity as we were visited by literally hundreds of our colleagues and employment opportunity seekers.
Our swag was in high demand, particularly the prime item: Apple TV won by CodeMash attendee John Svinicki in a random drawing.
This was another record setting year for CodeMash with 1400 attendees. We congratulate the conference organizers for another wildly successful event!
Automation Alley’s Winter edition of X-Ology contains an article by Stout System’s Founder and President, John W. Stout. Check it out on page 37, “Can IT Supply Meet Demand?”
Yet again, the CodeMash crew has surpassed itself. The conference was bursting at the seams with more attendees, more sessions and more fun than ever.
We had a lot of traffic at our booth and were glad to shake hands with as many members of the software community as we could.
One of the most exciting events at CodeMash was the Stout Software Smackdown—20 minutes of pulse pounding software development.
And the winner is…
Bryan Boettcher
He used C# and Winforms to solve the Smackdown.
He was acknowledged by thunderous applause.
A special thanks to JetBrains for providing us with the prize: a personal license for any one of their great software products!
CodeMash v2.0.1.1 will be held January 12-14, 2011 at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH. The conference will feature sessions given by leading industry speakers, covering the languages of C#, F#, Java, Python, and Ruby as well as many other programming methodologies.
This is the fifth consecutive year Stout has sponsored CodeMash.
We will also be hosting another Stout Software Smackdown! The details:
Here is your chance to take down your competition and show your fellow geeks who’s the best!
n developer teams enter. Only one developer team leaves victorious.
From the opening bell, 15 minutes of pulse-pounding, action-packed software development.
You and your teammates are allowed one laptop—and as much human intelligence as you have available—to solve a fun and challenging software puzzle.
It’s a no-holds-barred smackdown!
Use the O/S, platform, language and framework of your choice.
Never has software been this exciting, this challenging, or this action-packed.
1. Choose your team, between one and three developers (one laptop per team).
2. Choose a team name.
Show up with your game face on, ready to win fame and a fabulous prize.
The winning team will receive a personal license for ANY JetBrains product of their choosing.
Okay, I admit, being a technology company isn’t exactly the same as being a wolf.
But I am not clever enough to think of a witty way to pose the question, so you’ll have to bear with my half-baked attempt at humor.
Here is the real issue:
Many (too many) companies do not realize that they have grown into technology companies.
Let’s take the fictitious Grocery Delivery Company (GDC) as an example.
Twenty years ago, GDC took grocery orders over the phone and wrote them on a piece of paper. Or maybe they provided customers with a list of groceries and had them check off what they needed. GDC purchases the groceries and delivers them.
Along comes the Internet.
Now GDC provides a list of groceries online. Customers log in, check off what they need, pay for everything by credit card and await the little white delivery truck.
Is GDC a technology company?
From GDC’s perspective, the answer is no. They are heavily invested in delivery trucks and delivery personnel. They are heavily invested in managing relationships with customers and vendors. The amount of time spent on the technology side of the business is infinitesimal by comparison.
But—and this is very important—GDC would not be able to run the business if its online services went down.
And another but—if Better Grocery Delivery Company (BGDC) opened its doors with a superior online presence, GDC quickly lose its dominance in the market.
When Stout Systems is hired to perform a technology assessment, we run into this fundamental misunderstanding a lot: companies with massive dependence upon custom written software or Web applications treating their IT Departments like they are incidental to the business. More often than not, the IT Department is central to the business. In fact, in the age of ubiquitous network connectivity, IT systems act as the central nervous system of every company.
One could definitely argue that a hospital is not a technology company. Oh, there’s a lot of technology in a hospital. But it is doctors, nurses, beds, operating rooms, and so forth that are at the core of the business. However, hospitals are savvy enough to recognize that without their IT Departments, they are dead in the water. Without information—patient scheduling, staff scheduling, facilities scheduling, patient records, etc., etc., etc.—the hospital functioning would grind to a halt. So hospitals grant their IT Departments as much respect as any other branch or department of the operation.
As we move further into the information age, companies will have to revisit how they view themselves. And they may just have to raise the IT Departments’ roles in their organization to a more dominant position!
