LDC Hangover

03 Jun 2012

It was clear, from the attitude and the joy held throughout the conference, that the negativity and the recurring problems of three years ago have been shelved. I did not hear a single complaint during the whole conference (with the exception of a few suggestions for improvement, as discussed below). The bitterness and resentment are washed away. People are excited again.

Heck, I am excited. The conference had me giddy.

A Recap of Events

It was understandable that there was significant overall consumption of food and beverage, as we had quite a bit to celebrate. During the conference we announced the following;

• Lasso 9.2 released - A key release containing significant architectural changes to allow the integration of debugging and other key features, as required in #2.
• LassoLab released - The first Lasso-centric IDE (Integrated Development Environment) whose sole focus is the Lasso language. Including code-folding, syntax colouring and debugging, this tool will revolutionize our Lasso development lives. LassoLab has been released as open-source and free.
• LassoLab for Eclipse announced - The same as above, but as a stand-alone plugin available for Eclipse.
• LassoLab Profiler announced - The first commercial, code-level speed analysis tool for hyper charging your code.

Also, not to be forgotten;

• New LassoTalk - Greatly improved architecturally, with a new clean aesthetic intended to be used within LassoLab itself.
• New TagSwap - We (special thanks to Jason Huck) moved TagSwap.net to a new home within the Lasso site itself. The goal is to eventually enable the addition of the sharing of code from LassoLab through this portal - and also to ensure it is easy for newcomers to Lasso to exploit its wonderful open-source code.
• Scheduler - We announced the first round of Beta testing for a stand-alone scheduling App to replace the scheduler functionality held within Lasso 8 and previous. (Note, Beta list is closed for now.)
• Lasso Memcached - thanks to Ke Carlton, we will soon be releasing a set of open-source tags for the popular Memcached solution.
• Pygments for Lasso - thanks to Eric Knibbe, we now have syntax colouring which can be installed in external applications and used on critical development-oriented sites around the world.
• Coda 2 Support - thanks to Steffan Cline, those of you who have moved to the recently released Coda version will now have Lasso 9 syntax colouring and more.

We also had a number of fantastic examples from the community which will be shared over the coming weeks/months.

My special thanks to all of the speakers who came from all over the world to share their brilliance. Everyone learned, everyone shared joy. The conference was an out-of-the-park success.

Toronto was sorry to see you leave.

Some Awards

One of the neatest new things we did was give out a series of new awards for individuals who have either done the most to contribute to the Lasso language in the last year, or who have submitted example of excellent use of Lasso code. The individuals in question were;

Best use of Lasso 8: Mason Miller for SiteWelder
Best use of Lasso 9: Ke Carlton for S L A P C O D E
Best new developer: Dave Bruhn from NCHA
Lasso Values Award: Jolle Carlestam for Convenient ID Card Photo Process
Lasso Community Award: Steffan Cline.
Lasso Community: Highly Commended: Steve Piercy; Doug Burchard; Brad Lindsay.

Congratulations to all of our award winners! Keep up the great work!

Some Great Feedback

Instead of closing remarks from myself, we had closing remarks from the community itself. Add to this the fantastic dialogue we had with a number of the attendees during the days of the conference, and together the most important result of the conference other than a great feeling of "the community is together again" were some amazing points about what LassoSoft should do next. Here are some of the biggest gems (though we took away a lot more).

• *Continue what we are doing.
• Documentation, Documentation, Documentation - we heard it loud and clear - we need more documentation. We are going to need to unpack this and discuss it at much more length but everyone agrees. We just don't have enough good documentation.
• Books - See above, but make sure there are some good old-fashioned paper books.
• Industry Events - LassoSoft should go to more industry events, for on boarding and internal learning - I might even suggest we set up a "where should we be as a community" list, and LassoSoft makes a point of looking into attending as many as possible. Obviously, these can get super-expensive (in both cash expenditure, opportunity cost and lost momentum), but we need to start planning to do these things.
• Engage more developers as Evangelists - I'm not sure how to get this going (suggestions?)
• Stickers - We need stickers! Sticker the Planet!
• Mentorship - We should set up a centralized mentorship program (or sharing program?) to strengthen one-another's coding skills. We have already started this off with our Code Coaching offering.
• Weekly Skills Development Workshops - We should set up a series of weekly workshops, by different developers, to improve our skills. Even if they were only 15-30 minutes (and later dropped on YouTube), the overall effect on learning would be tremendous.
• Links in the documentation to source code
• Start User Groups in areas of key interest

On one last note of feedback, quite a few people also commented on the centrality and ease of holding the conference in Toronto. Not only is it less expensive for LassoSoft during this regrowth period (meaning more resources directed at Lasso itself), but that the hotel was reasonably well located and comfortable. Interesting thought for next year, that perhaps we should keep it in Toronto for a few years... (and we kept all of the shootins and floodin away till the conference was over)...

There were many other points of feedback (such as on our support practices, on what other tools we need to develop, etc.), and we will take everything into consideration as we continue to grow.

Thank you all for the feedback. It helps us help you.

One Last Note

On one last note, I reflect on the community as it stands today. After the conference, I have absolutely no doubt that the LassoSoft community - though a little smaller than it used to be - is alive and well.

I will note, in conclusion, that the period of questioning Lasso's survival is now closed. This current period has actually been incredibly positive, as everyone in the community has had a chance to look elsewhere and not found it to be the Shangri-La they were hoping it to be. In addition, people have learned about the best components of the other development communities and have brought excellent suggestions back to the Lasso world. We are not hampered by design-by-committee or by massive corporate agendas, and are poised to do incredible things moving forward as a community.

The fact that Lasso survived the valley of the shadow of death and has come through empowered makes me proud. I hope that we can find some of the most engaged and brilliant developers who left wandering in the desert with the snakes and sand and invite them back for a drink of fresh water.

In others words… hey you, the old Lasso guy! I welcome you back with open arms. The issues of the past are over. Come back, celebrate and grow with us once again. Your old skills and knowledge will be truly appreciated, and bring you great value, and there are new things to be learned and done.

I completely understand why you left (heck, I did as well). You will not be looked down upon when you realize you can return in a spirit of love and friendship and leverage the strength of Lasso once again.

The Rhino is here to stay.

Sean Stephens

CEO
LassoSoft Inc.