Well, its been a while since I posted. I was away at a conference earlier this week (Monday and Tuesday). The conference was IT360 and I wouldn't recommend it to any software development shop. Good place if you want to get your feet wet with speaking at conferences, but otherwise steer clear. They are not a conference "by developers, for developers", its more like it was done by professional conference people for anyone who will pay money.
Anyway, why did I go? I had won a "super pass", value >$1000 from a local IT organization. So, it was a very low cost event for me to attend and I thought I would learn a lot. When I got there, speakers (the ones I wanted to see) didn't show up and that almost killed a whole day. Anyway, this conference really was for people who don't work in software development and are looking for some information about topics they may not get exposed to (think government with an IT organization).
This isn't a complaint - I really appreciate going to the event, its just that I learned a few things:
- Developer conferences usually have enough people to fill in for other people if they are sick. There's enough people in the audience to recover from someone unable to show up.
- I'm only going to conferences by practitioners, for practitioners. Considering this is my second conference, its a good lesson to learn.
- Free is always good, but sometimes there are different levels of "free". :)
I'm going to a one day local conference at the end of the month. Should be pretty good and today was the last day for registration. This is a conferences by practitioners, for practitioners, so I'm pretty psyched about it!
