I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out those tidbits that are are really working well at the PDC.

First of all, the networking. Between the near-ubiquitous WiFi to the abundant wired connections (along with power!), networking at the PDC raises personal connectedness to a new level. I can’t imagine anyone doing a technical conference in the future without at least some of this capability (you hear this, Software Development?). It’s fantastic.

The Big Room: What a concept. I just took a quick tour of the room. It’s fantastic. There’s a store in there selling books and tons of Microsoft identity swag. Whod’ve thought that you could actually sell swag? It sure makes it easy to pick up those “souvenirs” for the guys who couldn’t make it to the conference. Also, they have “lounges” set up for different topics, seeded with various MS personnel to “guide” the talks. Okay, this is really just Marketing, but it’s good Marketing. They’ve made it easy to do or not do. Then, there’s the guided tutorial room: rows and rows of computers all hooked up and ready to guide folks though the paces. This is really the way to do things. It keeps people involved.

The Game Area. I’d be more impressed with the gaming area if there were a way for me to log into WoW from here. After all, for the MMORPG crowd, that’s gaming today, not this other tournament stuff. I suppose there has to be some room for improvement into the future.

All in all, these are things that should be going on at all tech conferences. This should be what it’s all about.

9/13/2005 11:37:55 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  PDC 05