posted on Friday, March 19, 2004 2:54 PM
by
DougSeven
DevDays is Over (for me)
Well, my DevDays run is over. I was fortunate to have sopoken at the first one (New York) and the largest one (so far - Seattle), as well as Newark (no special stats here). Be the time it was all over I had given three different presentations. It culminated in Seattle at what was jokingly called “DougDays” - since I ended up presenting 3 of the 4 Web track sessions (filling in for an ill Carl Prothman).
I plan on posting some follow-up on my tracks and my impressions, but let me say this now. A lot of Microsoft people kept asking me what I thought of the content vs. the audience - how appropriate was the content for the audience. IMHO it was perfect. Some more advanced developers I know had complained about it (like Tim), but the fact is DevDays is not intended to satisfy advanced developers - it is intended to satisfy the largest possible cross section of developers. Lets face it, that means beginning- to intermediate-level content, not advanced-level.
Based on the kinds of questions I was being asked after each session, and the number of people that were asking them, I believe the content hit its target. If you are an advanced developer, pay the money to go to PDC and attend the higher-level sessions. You will be happier in the long run. Ultimately I think Microsoft should do a better job at telling people when they should NOT be attending an event (like saying, “You know too much to go to DevDays - save you $100 and put it toward PDC”), and telling attendees what level the content really is.
More to come soon.