Today I spoke at the DevUp conference in St. Louis. This conference has been rebranded from Days of .NET and continues to be a fantastic conference year after year. If you attended my session, The Top 5 Mistakes You Are Probably Making with SQL Server, you can download my slides here.

One of the cool things about this conference is the large number of sponsors looking for developers. If you want to have a career as a programmer, St. Louis is the place to be. Earlier this year, St. Louis was recognized as the top start up city in the country.

There is another thing about St. Louis that I can’t stop talking about: LaunchCode. LaunchCode is a nonprofit founded by Jim McKelvey. LaunchCode helps people get careers in technology even if they don’t have all the checkboxes, like a degree and experience, checked. They match up talent to companies needing talent in internships. Nine times out of ten, those internships lead to full time jobs. I am proud to be a LaunchCode mentor!