Meet NETwork speakers: Interview with Lee Brandt
We continue our interviews with NETwork speakers. Our next speaker is Lee Brandt, the USA. Lee is Microsoft MVP in Visual C#, one of the directors of the Kansas City Developer Conference and regional mentor for .NET User Groups in Kansas and Missouri.
Hi, Lee! Please tell NETwork attendees when and how did your career start?
I worked in a call center for a seminar company. I was tasked with answering questions about our technical seminars (because I knew about computers). One day, my boss was talking to the IT Director, and they were discussing what they were going to do about the website because the “Webmaster” had quit. I piped up and told them that I could do it. They were skeptical to say the least. But I convinced them to let me give it a try, and I did it. I had to learn Cold Fusion 4.0 on the fly, but I knew HTML and a little JavaScript. Best. Job. Ever.
Was it IT at first place?
My FIRST job was not IT. I worked in a lumber yard cleaning up scrap wood. I have also worked a lot of construction jobs, was in the Army as a truck driver and worked as a mechanic for a few years before getting into programming.
Tell about your user group activities and mentoring
I run the local .Net User Group in Kansas City. I also run a conference in Kansas City called Kansas City Developer Conference (or KCDC). I regularly speak at start-up incubators and help start-ups understand how they might leverage software (or not) to help their business.
What events have you attended as a speaker?
I regularly speak at conferences all over the US:
- Desert Code Camp — Phoenix, AZ
- Heartland Developer Conference — Omaha, NE
- St. Louis Days of Dot Net — St. Louis, MO
- Nebraska Code Camp — Lincoln, NE
- Twin Cities Code Camp — Minneapolis, MN
- Iowa Code Camp — Des Moines, IA
- CodeStock — Knoxville, TN
- DevLink — Chattanooga, TN
And last year, I spoke for the first time outside the US in Toronto, CA at SCREENS.
Have you ever visited Ukraine before? What are your expectations?
Never been to Ukraine before. I am expecting a lot of really smart developers and maybe a few cocktails.
At NETwork 2015 Lee will speak about JavaScript LevelUp. In this session you will learn about closures and how they help to modularize your JavaScript, prototypical inheritance and how to extend JavaScript as well as boost your knowledge of JavaScript design patterns. Put simply, you will learn how to take your JavaScript skills to the next level!