ArtOfBabel.com is a sponsor of the Stackoverflow Dev Days conference - find out about the conference and how we engaged the community at the show.

Stackoverflow's Dev Days is a one day conference that is "a full day of inspiration and learning for developers, brought to you by the team behind StackOverflow.com and FogBugz".The conference organizers requested sponsors from the community to provide WiFi and coffee breaks.

I saw this as an opportunity to engage with possible readers and authors for ArtOfBabel.com and decided to sponsor the coffee breaks for the Toronto event that was held on October 23, 2009 in Toronto, Canada.

One of the benefits of sponsoring an event like this is exposure of course. Since I don't have anything to sell, I wanted to take the opportunity to meet the StackOverflow comminuty and make them aware of ArtOfBabbel.com. We had an exhibit space - I made and setup the ArtOfBabel.com banner on the right. Evidently, I have some talent for making banners - I commissined the logo just after ArtOfBabel.com opened, but I modified the color scheme, size and other attributes. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Knowing that most exhibitors at most conferences are trying to sell something and are often staffed by marketing-type people, I wanted some way to start conversations to explain the site's purpose, why I was at the event and what I was looking for. Rather than give away useless junk to everyone, I decided to have a draw for a few good prizes.

The prizes for the draw were two of the new iPod Shuffles and a new book - XKCD Volume 0 by Randall Munroe.

Joel Spolsky, the founder of fog Creek Software - the organization that created StackOverflow - was at the conference and announced ArtOfBabel.com's presence at the show, the fact that we were having a draw, and thanked us for sponsoring the breaks.

We met most attendees during the morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks. I had some great conversations, met some very cool people, and gained some new perspectives about integration and the developer community.

I was surprosed to see that most people were interested in winning the XKCD book. There was interest in the iPods, but the book turned out to be the real draw! I actually bought the book on a whim and bought a second copy in case it arrived in time for the conference. Fortunately, the book showed up just two days before the conference!

I had a great time, met some fantastic people, and got the word out about ArtOfBabel.com. I'm also happy to have met Joel and his team at the conference and look forward to perhaps sponsoring other events like this.