Well, that’s it. PDC ‘05 is officially history. I can’t even get to the online site to post my evaluations of the sessions I saw today.

So, today I spent most of my time at panel discussions. It was great to have the bulk of the panels all day Friday. It made it a whole lot easier to figure out what to see. Which leads me to my central theme for this posting:

This was the best organized conference I’ve ever been to. Now, I’ve been going to development conferences for over 10 years. I’ve seen really big ones, like the year that Software Development was held with the first Java One conference, and I’ve been to really small ones, like the Software Development conference that coincided with the start of the Iraq war. And, yes, I’ve been to conferences other than Software Development too! But, let me reiterate: this was the best organized conference I’ve ever been to. Here are some of the things I think that others should be emulating:

1. Food: There was food available at all times. Easy to eat stuff that included both the typical “junk” food that so many developers run on as well as more “healthy” stuff like tons of fruit. Coffee was also always available in copious quantities. While lunch was also served, I neither partook of it or missed it. I never had to stop going to sessions in order to eat. Instead, I was picking all day long, while packing in the sessions.

2. Lounges: There were lounges set up in the Big Room, each of which was dedicated to a different track. People could hang out in the lounges and talk to experts in that particular field. Okay, so MS was mainly interested in using this venue to push its products. That’s always the case. The main thing was that this created yet another place were attendees could get together with each other as well as speakers they may have heard.

3. Computers: There were PC’s everywhere! In fact, all reviews were done online, so there weren’t the usual little pieces of paper you had to deal with at the end of each session. You could also use the PC’s to get up to date info on the conference as well as just do general Internet stuff, like checking your e-mail.

4. Network Connections: This leads to the next great thing. WiFi everywhere (nearly) and tons of tables set up with both power and wired connections. It was trivial to stay connected with both the conference and the outside world while here, thanks to the ubiquitous network connections available. In fact, I didn’t even attend Bill Gates’ keynote; I watched it on my laptop! No crowds, no lines. And I could read the news while listening.

5. BOF’s: There were tons of BOF sessions. And, these were real BOF’s, not just marketing opportunities for various consultants (or MS for that matter). My only real beef was that the sessions were always late at night (starting at 9:00), and since I wasn’t at a conference hotel, this made attending inconvenient.

6. Shuttles: All of the conference hotels (not mine, unfortunately) were on a shuttle route, with the shuttles running continuously. So, if you wanted to go back to your hotel for an hour or so, and then return you could do it (fairly) easily.

7: Panels: Lots of panel discussions. We tech heads love panel discussions. Get the experts on stage together and give us a chance to ask them the hard questions. And better yet, they reserved a day for these panels, so I didn’t have to give up some other activity to see them.

I don’t know how much money MS spent on this shindig (A lot, I think), and I don’t know how profitable another conference that offered these features would be. I do know that all of these things would attract tons more people than I’ve seen at other conferences recently.

The folks at SD Expo should especially take note.

9/16/2005 3:47:16 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development | PDC 05