I returned from the 2009 annual ACM Reflections | Projections conference held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was asked to speak at the conference about Git.

I really enjoyed attending the conference, and not just because I learned how to play Beer Pong at the staff party. The organizers did a really good job of putting on a great event – even if the line ups for food were a bit long, but it was free food for starving students, so what would you expect. I got to meet awesome people like Bram Moolenaar, the author of Vim, Alexis Ohanian, of reddit fame, and Ryan North, the guy behind Dinosaur Comics. I was also in awe of the facilities the CS people have at UIUC.

For ACM Reflections, I ended giving two talks: first one to introduce the topic of revision control, and second one to show people how to use Git. Although the second talk was called a “Workshop” it was basically a 2 hour lecture on Git, and I think it went really well. People kept asking questions for another hour after, and I received positive comments after the talk. However, I was not overly happy about the first part, and found it a bit weak. I think I’ll stick to teaching people about Git, rather than teaching them about revision control in general.

The first talk was recorded and will be available on the reflections website soon, so you can tell me if you agree :)

Anyway, I ended up redoing my previous presentation using a slightly different format. You can get all the slidework.

… and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t win at Beer Pong.