Looking over the announced sessions for MWLUG 2016 down in Austin, I’m excited. There’s a good mix of things you can use today and road maps you can apply in the future. I’m a developer, so all the Development and Best Practices sessions look interesting. The tough part will be picking which ones to attend (and record!)
Five sessions that jumped off the page at me are, in no particular order:
Debugging Java In Your Domino Applications with Julian Robichaux — Java just kills me sometimes. Heck, all of XPages does, but learning more about how to debug and troubleshoot is always useful.
Extreme Development: Pair Programming with Devin Olson and Mike McGarel — Now that Elvis Lezcano is aboard at DAI, we might have a chance to do some of this. He’s the smartest developer I’ve worked with, which I why this is the third job we’ve had together.
Think Outside The Box with Karl-Henry Martinsson — We’ve just been breaking into using REST services with jQuery and Bootstrap to present data, so getting someone else’s take on it will expand my ability to combine data from multiple databases to dazzle our users. (see Kathy’s session on dashboards for ideas she’s using for us)
Getting Your Hands on Graphs with Nathan Freeman — I have loved all the conceptual sessions and want to learn more. If Nathan can get me to understand, there’s no telling how far we can go!
A Modernized Developer’s Workflow with Domino/XPages with Eric McCormick — Workflow has always been a great strength of Notes, so getting modernized by someone who’s not spouting theory, but displaying methods in practice is exciting.
Now, before anyone complains about me not mentioning their sessions…. I’d like to sit in on about… 27 sessions. Since Marky has made no progress on the time machine and IBM doesn’t have anyone working replication of people instead of just data and design, I think I only get about a dozen sessions.
has two bubble-levels and rises above the crowd, even when they’re standing. This is most helpful when I’m at the back of a big room and people need to walk in front of the camera. It probably also helps a little in assuring a better angle for the footage – nothing worse than staring up at the speaker. My 
might actually be the coolest piece of equipment in the bundle (the 
is old, but not cheap) and having found the back cover, it worked like a champ in Atlanta. The vaulted ceilings in Grand Rapids last year may have hindered the quality of the sound, but missing the cover couldn’t have helped. I might look at adding wireless microphones or getting some lights, since I know I can improve the image and sound quality further, though I be better served by buying some books and getting a steadier hand! Checking a few videos, I know I need more attention to lighting for certain, if not actual lights of my own.
Lost in Code 