The past four years, I have had the privileged to work with Lee Brandt and Jonathan Mills organizing a conference geared towards IT. I feel that this is one way for me to give back to the IT community that have given me not only knowledge to be where I am today, but also plenty of friends for life.
Kansas City Developer Conference aka KCDC was the idea and creation of Lee Brandt. I remember meeting Lee at the conference. Lee gave me the opportunity to work with him on the second KCDC. That conference as attended by over 100 IT people. And the event has grown each year. Last year, we had a little over 300 IT folks and the topics grew as well. The speakers that presented at the conference were from Iowa, New York, Cincinnati, Michigan, Virginia, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.
I am super excited about the conference this year (much more so than past years). This year we are excited to present a bigger and better conference. KCDC 2013 will be held at Bartle Hall in downtown Kansas City. It will be a three-day multi-track conference. It will cover all aspects of software development, agile project management and soft skills.
We are a non-profit organization. We rely on sponsors to make the conference a successful one. We have a lot of support from companies in the local area. For that, we thank you.
I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.
January 12, 2013
August 7, 2012
Transition : Developer to Manager - St. Louis Day of .Net
August 3rd, 2012, I presented a talk at St. Louis Day of .Net. The topic was about my experience transitioning from a developer to a manager. What I tried to do was to provide some guidelines and provided advise based on what I went through. This is really a difficult topic to present, unlike a technology talk (and to be clear, I am NOT implying that technology talks are easy). There are no "better" way of doing things, in this case, making the transition. I consider the topic of this talk more on the soft skill side.
I was shocked to see that there were so many interest in this talk. All the seats were filled and there were quite a few people were left standing at the back. I was thrilled to see that there were a lot of discussions and questions in the talk. There were a lot of tough and yet great questions.
One of thing that I noticed was that there were quite a few folks that were taking pictures when I brought up the slides of the list of books. And I also had a few folks that came up to me afterwards asking to see the list again. So, here it is. I hope you will find this list a good start and if you have other books that you have personally read and like, please feel free to email me at parkite@gmail.com or leave me a message on this post.
I have also read a few other books from Kenneth Blanchard. They are a very easy read and provided me a lot of information that I have found very useful.
For those of you who attended my talk at St. Louis Day of .Net, I hope that I was able to provide some help in your quest. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to be able to do this talk again in the near future.
I was shocked to see that there were so many interest in this talk. All the seats were filled and there were quite a few people were left standing at the back. I was thrilled to see that there were a lot of discussions and questions in the talk. There were a lot of tough and yet great questions.
One of thing that I noticed was that there were quite a few folks that were taking pictures when I brought up the slides of the list of books. And I also had a few folks that came up to me afterwards asking to see the list again. So, here it is. I hope you will find this list a good start and if you have other books that you have personally read and like, please feel free to email me at parkite@gmail.com or leave me a message on this post.
- One minute manager - Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
- How to win friends & influence people - Dale Carnegie
- Change your questions, change your life - Marilee Adams
- The three signs of a miserable job - Patrick Lencioni
- 7 habits of highly effective people - Steven Covey
- QBQ! The question behind the question - John G Miller
I have also read a few other books from Kenneth Blanchard. They are a very easy read and provided me a lot of information that I have found very useful.
For those of you who attended my talk at St. Louis Day of .Net, I hope that I was able to provide some help in your quest. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to be able to do this talk again in the near future.
St. Louis Day of .Net 2012
St. Louis Day of .Net once again, was held at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, MO. This year was a three day event. The first day was a day of pre-compilers with topics covering Windows 8, Azure, TFS, and many others. That evening, Unhandled Exception officially kicked off the event with a great concert.
Overall, this event was definitely better than last year. The number of attendees grew to a little over 900, the food was great, helpful volunteers, great entertainment, and the location was fabulous. The staff at Ameristar St. Charles were friendly and they provided great service.
Once again, kudos to the organizers and volunteers of the event. I look forward to another great conference next year.
August 20, 2011
St. Louis Day of .NET August 5th and 6th, 2011
The 4th annual St. Louis Day of .NET conference was held at the Ameristar Resort and Casino. This event was attended by over 800 people. The event was very well organized. The organizers and the volunteers did an excellent job to ensure that things went smoothly. This was my third year attending this event.
This year was different for me. I had the priveledge to convene an open space. The topic that I had chosen was "Transition from a developer to a manager". As you know, I had recently became a manager. So, this was a topic that I have some experience with. I had over 40 people attending my open space. I was shocked by the turnout. There was a lot of great discussion and I personally learned a lot from those who have attended and shared their experiences.
I am looking forward to next year. Attending great sessions, meeting new friends, seeing old ones, and great conversations are priceless.
June 13, 2011
From developer to manager - the transition
Well folks, I have news. I have now been a manager for a little over three months. Prior to that, for about 10 months, I was doing project lead work, dealing with both developers, project managers, and business units. You may be wondering why. I am a developer at heart and will always be a developer. I love technology and learning new ways of doing things. I am at a point in my life where I need to make a change. I know that I am not the strongest developer. There are two career path that I can take. Architect or manager. I chose management.
My manager was supportive enough to let me "test" out management. He created a project lead position in his team and put me on it. I have about 5 people. I manage their daily tasks as well as other managerial duties. During the ten months, I had the opportunity to work more closely with other managers, both on my managers level and higher.
One day, about three months ago, I was presented with an opportunity to be the manager of the Application Support team. The team consists of eight FTEs and two contractors. Most of these folks are folks that I have been working with the past several years. These folks support a little over 200 applications ranging from in house built application using Microsoft and Java technologies to vendor applications. I accepted the opportunity and challenge. I was enthusiastic about the opportunity and its challenges while at the same time scared. However, I am one who hardly ever backs down from a challenge. I may fail but I go down fighting hard.
Being a manager is definitely much different than being a project lead. There are so many other things that a manager has to do. Being responsible for ten people and managing their expecatations as well as expectations of others is something I don't believe that I can prepare for, regardless of what books I read and what I do. There are no training other than on the job. What has helped me is the support that I get from my family (especially my wife, taking care of my son while I am either at work working or at home working the long hours), and from a lot of folks at work.
I find myself reading a lot more nowadays. Not books about MVC, MVVM, or WCF. No technologies book for me. It's books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, One Minute Manager, and High Five. I have always considered myself being able to handle all sorts of different people. And I find myself being challenged everyday.
The first three months has definitely been challenging. I know that there are many more challenges to come. I welcome them. I know there will be days where I want to go back to being a developer. I hope days like those are few and far between.
With my new challenges in my professional life, I will be changing what my blogs are about. It will now include management. I will keep you all posted.
My manager was supportive enough to let me "test" out management. He created a project lead position in his team and put me on it. I have about 5 people. I manage their daily tasks as well as other managerial duties. During the ten months, I had the opportunity to work more closely with other managers, both on my managers level and higher.
One day, about three months ago, I was presented with an opportunity to be the manager of the Application Support team. The team consists of eight FTEs and two contractors. Most of these folks are folks that I have been working with the past several years. These folks support a little over 200 applications ranging from in house built application using Microsoft and Java technologies to vendor applications. I accepted the opportunity and challenge. I was enthusiastic about the opportunity and its challenges while at the same time scared. However, I am one who hardly ever backs down from a challenge. I may fail but I go down fighting hard.
Being a manager is definitely much different than being a project lead. There are so many other things that a manager has to do. Being responsible for ten people and managing their expecatations as well as expectations of others is something I don't believe that I can prepare for, regardless of what books I read and what I do. There are no training other than on the job. What has helped me is the support that I get from my family (especially my wife, taking care of my son while I am either at work working or at home working the long hours), and from a lot of folks at work.
I find myself reading a lot more nowadays. Not books about MVC, MVVM, or WCF. No technologies book for me. It's books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, One Minute Manager, and High Five. I have always considered myself being able to handle all sorts of different people. And I find myself being challenged everyday.
The first three months has definitely been challenging. I know that there are many more challenges to come. I welcome them. I know there will be days where I want to go back to being a developer. I hope days like those are few and far between.
With my new challenges in my professional life, I will be changing what my blogs are about. It will now include management. I will keep you all posted.
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