For those not aware, the technology community of the Midwest has come together to create yet another amazing conference.  This was the second time That Conference (http://www.thatconference.com) was held at the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells, and it was my first time attending. I really must give my thanks to Clark Sell and the rest of the planning committee for putting things together, I was very much reminded of Codemash (http://www.codemash.org).

Initially, I was not going to speak at That Conference but sometimes things happen and the outcome works in your favor. Josh Twist, the PM on the Windows Azure Mobile Services team at Microsoft, was initially slated to speak on Mobile Services, however, due to a scheduling conflict, ended up withdrawing.  I was very honored when he asked me to take his place. However, I decided my Push Notifications presentation was simply not appropriate for That Conference, I would need to discuss WAMS with a greater feature scope. This meant, creating an entirely new talk.  Thankfully, due to my commitments and other plans for August, Centare had been allowing me to remain relatively idle, I used this time to construct a new presentation, based largely on Josh’s BUILD 2013 talk.  I managed to complete the slide deck and demo’s within the week and thanks to the cooperation of my fellow Centarians, I was able to get in enough practice to make the presentation a rousing success at That Conference.

For me, it was a huge dream come true.  While I have been gratefully chosen to speak at many conferences in the past, That Conference was by far the biggest and most visible one to date; I have been trying to speak at Codemash for three years, but its not easy, there are MANY good speakers out there.  I was very thrilled and happy to share my views on Azure Mobile Services with the attendees at That Conferece.  I look forward to a success engagement next week at DevLink in Chattanooga, Tennessee and, with some luck, I will get to speak at Codemash in January of 2014.

Thanks again to That Conference for allowing me to speak and thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed my session.