SecondConf was a great experience! I spent the weekend learning and taking in a lot of useful knowledge about software and also hardware!
The most I learnt about was Bluetooth Low Energy from @macisv (Bob Kressin) and @bradlarson (Brad Larson). They are doing some really spiffy things with the technology. Not only is it going to have uses that can benefit our day to day lives, but it will be great for hobby uses and research.
Bob actually gave me a BLE module to play around with, and I have one of the shields from RedBearLabs from Maker Faire now as well, so I cannot wait to test it out! I’ll probably have to rent an iPod Touch for a weekend to test out the apps on it, but hey better than nuttin! Better than MFi! 
(That there in the pic is also a book that I won from the puzzle contest!)
I gave a talk on Apps for Arduino and RoboBrrd! You can view the slides on my webpage here, or on SlideShare here. There was a demo afterwards where I showed off RoboBrrd, the laser cut pieces, and also the boards.
I was quite pleased with this talk, since it was 40 minutes long I was able to explain everything in detail. People clapped afterwards, and the response on twitter was good, so hopefully people enjoyed it and learned something new!
^ pic by Kevin Mitchell
The demo worked great, except Impy had a little bit of stage-fright batteries at the beginning. I’m glad that I left the demo to after the whole talk was finished, because then people could come up and ask questions!
^ pic by Kevin Mitchell
This pic is funny, apparently RoboBrrd does not know how microphones work yet.
^ pic by Kevin Mitchell
It was interesting how often the word ‘design’ was used during the conference, mainly because it’s important, but it also has a lot of different contexts. From SecondConf I learned that design could mean anything from the user interface of the app, to accessibility, to behind the scenes physics formulas. Well, it seems kind of obvious now, but it’s just like design is everywhere. Not just CAD or EDA or UI, but how you do whatever you’re doing!
One of the perks of the conference being in Willis tower was going up to the Sky Deck and being totally scared out of your brains! I’m not usually a person scared of heights, but when you step onto the open glass, your mind plays tricks on you and you think that there is no glass- that you would be falling. It was pretty crazy kneeling down to take a picture of RoboBrrd like this:
It’s just so crazy to be that tall up off the ground!
The organizers were really great! The food was good, the pop was good, and even the tea was good! The pizza there was pretty crazily three dimensional too. Amy was awesome, and tried her best to rescue me when I was stranded at ORD and I only had access to Twitter through a poopy touch screen public computer. In this pic is David and I, he was really cool too!
^ pic by Kevin Mitchell
As you can tell, I was pretty happy to be at SecondConf! 
I’m looking forward to trying to go next year. The size is small enough that you get to meet everyone at least once, and learn about what they make etc. It’s just an excellent way to learn pearls of wisdom from other developers who are as experienced as you, if not more!
^ pic by Kevin Mitchell
It was great meeting many new friends at SecondConf, and I’m really looking forward to what everyone is going to make in the future!
