The C# variety Show began on Thursday with my trip to GLUG.net in Lansing, (this is a great group of guys and gals, and if your free, I highly recommend you to attend, they even have a user group in Flint now!) and didn't stop until yesterday when I got home from CODODN.
At about 6:30 on Friday, Mr. McWherter shows up at my house and the road trip begins. After about 4.5 hours, stopping only for necessities we arrive in Wilmington Ohio around. After checking in at the hotel adjoined to the conference center we started twittering to find out if anyone else had made it down yet, and got no love. Now...for those of you who have never visited Wilmington, this picture should illustrate what it's like...
Right...almost the middle of nowhere...However the Roberts Conference Center is conveniently located between the 3 major user groups in the area: Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to visit any of the sessions because I had to polish up the demos for my presentation. I did however get to hang with some of the best speakers around in the speakers lounge. It was great to be surrounded by folk who knew what they were doing and were able to throw this newbie speaker some great hints (Like, write your demos before you show up to the conference). Also, with three user groups involved I was able to meet A lot of great folks. All in all, the venue was a perfect fit for the conference.
I had just finished up my Demos when it was my turn to present. At first, there were only a handful of people in the room, but within a span of just a few minutes, there were people standing in the back. I was nervous as hell, but managed to get through the presentation, even with my funky new presentation mouse constantly wanting to zoom in on everything (Kudos to Mr. Prince for the presenter mouse). I had a lot of good questions throughout the presentation and most of the folk seemed to respond well to the "bite-sized-pieces-of-information" format. I even managed to get a few laughs out of my crude since of humor. One of the best pieces of feedback I received was that my talk was "..Like the man show meets the Nerd show"...so maybe "Girls on trampolines" isn't to racy for my talk after all :)
After my presentation, I had the chance to hang out with Josh Holmes and Joe O'Brian where we talked about presentation styles and they regaled presenting war stories (I especially like how Joe was trying to make a point and almost fell of the stage...priceless!). After the final presentations let out, we all ventured into the main ballroom for the swag give away. Some folks walked away with great gear, including licenses to Infragistics controls, Refactor and a host of other fantastic developer tools.
Once the conference was declared closed, most of us headed over to Max and Erma's, which was attached to the hotel/conference center. Due to a mis-communication, the restaurant had no idea that we were coming. Eventually we wound up with a party of 30, which the Hostess' and wait staff handled very elegantly. The service was top notch, however, most of us never received our appetizers (those of us back in the restaurant..there were quite a few of us still in the bar). So dinner went GREAT and the food was fantastic (Loved my heartattack-on-a-bun-pulling-over-in-Toledo-on-the-way- back-to-blow-up-a-restroom burger...thanks Mr. Hawley and Mr. Prince).
After things quieted down at the dinner table, about half (if not more) of us ventured up the Mr. 
Blankenburgs room for a little poker party. things got off to a great start, at my table was Dave Smith, Sarah Dutkiewicz, Matt Casto, James Bender, Monish (Mo) Nagisetty, Phil (Can't remember your last name chief) and Dan Rigsby. I had never had a chance to sit and hang out with most of these guys so it was great, drinking Sam Adams (even though Blankenburg got Miller and Coors just to f with me) and talking a combination of smack and tech.
A couple of hours later, we combined tables where it was Me (I made it woot!), Dave, Phil, Jeff Blankenburg, Jeff McWherter Kevin (blanking on your last name to bud) Cory Haines, and I think Darrell Hawley (I had a bit of whisky in me by this point so I'm a little fuzzy on the details). I ended up going out on the second hand where I called Kevin, thought he was bluffing...but he ended up having a flush and taking me out. Was a great game and I walked away with "Extreme programming adventures in c#" as a consolation prize. I do remember that at one point, Amanda Laucher Took all my chips while I was ordering Pizza and made them all pink...I immediately grabbed one of Dave Smiths chip racks and exchanged it for the pink one. The night continued on in due form with lots of great tech talk and a whole lot of drunk humor. Mad props go out to Blankenburg and the rest of the MS guys that made this happen. It was a great way to end a fantastic conference. 
The Next morning, those of us who had survived the night of poker ventured down to Max and Ermas once again for a fantastic breakfast. Shortly thereafter, we all headed back home.
This was my first overnight stay for a conference and I enjoyed every last minute of it. A perfect way to bring many people who are passionate about what they do together. I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a fantastic group of professionals who are dedicated to the community. I can't wait till the Western Michigan day of .net where we can all meet up again. After that, who knows, maybe the Cleveland Day of .net? or even the upcoming Lansing Day of .net!