I found that the content at Houston Tech Fest was stellar.  What a range!  We had people from all camps together in one place to learn & share about technology.

I had 2 sessions (which unfortunately conflicted with a few other talks I wanted to go see!).

Beginning iPhone Development

I spent a bit too long talking about Objective-C and didn’t get enough time to code.  I remember thinking that 75 minutes was a long time, but it was over before I knew it!

This talk had a lot of people in the room, and they all seemed genuinely engaged in the content.  Some were frightened by Objective-C (understandably so) but hopefully I swayed their fears just a tad.  iPhone development is fun!

Download the slide deck / code here.

(credit for the snowflake animation app:  http://appsamuck.com/day9.html )

Build Automation & Continuous Integration

This was a much smaller crowd, which was good I think… since it allowed us to have more of a conversation.  I have to admit I was feeling pretty horrible during this talk, and I hope it didn’t show too much.  I ended up leaving the event right after and went home and crashed!  Anyway we covered NAnt, Rake, Phantom, and Psake… talk a bit about Database Migration tools, and finally touched on Continous integration with Team City.  I again ran out of time, but I think there was good value in the build runner detail.

Download the slide deck / examples for this talk here.