I found this insulting actually. Okay, Phillip says Dave
is one of the best developers he's ever worked with. Yet
the guy is so destitute he can swing paying for himself?
And exactly what does he do when his 'donations' total
only US$1000? Rebate everyone? Take a long weekend in
the Bahamas?
Very very few attendees at this PDC really belong there.
The only ones that do are those who are involved with
developing products with release dates coinciding with
releases of the MS products. To all others they can
learn just as much - and more - by reading up on all the
blogging being done by those attendees and having
hands-on with the betas (which BTW are likely not being
given out as most are just alpha bits). Obviously Dave's
employer made a strategic decision that their developers
belong in the group of us who do not need to attend.
I made a personal prediction the other day. Wave one of
blogging will be ecstatic in nature over the
"cool" things being presented. Wave
two will be the inevitable backlash of postings from
many who discover they were misled and are previewing
some very UNREADY software. Wave three will be postings
that realize the biggest reason one should attend is
really unrelated to the "cool"
things... instead the networking potential and
realization.
Problem is, way too many are going for the
"cool" things only. They don't realize
previewing early alpha bits is relatively meaningless to
one's career compared to concrete development of
solutions.
Roy, I agree 100% with Dave. The long and short of it is
that there will be more shows like this and, if this guy
cannot afford to go to this years big event then, he
should start saving up for next years.
I'm in pretty much the same boat as you are - I live in
Australia. As you know, many of the really cool shows
are in the US; which costs people like us "an
arm and a leg" to attend. I was lucky enough to
have saved enough money to attend a
"cool" show in Redmond earlier this
year and I'm currently saving again so that I can afford
to go to 1 US show of my choice next year too. No pain -
no gain! :-)
I am sorry this insults you. But I actually think I
belong in this "select group",
considering my comany is part of the beta program for
the Speech SDK and server and will be utilizing BizTalk
2004 when it is released.
Anyway, when it comes down to it Roy is 100%correct in
saying that it is practically impossible for this to
work. But it doesn't hurt to try. Maybe Microsoft will
suprise me and give me a free registration pass.
Oh I see dave bettin has written his comment. Good for
you dave. I may not be 100% behind you on that course of
action, but hey, I may be totally and utterly wrong. I
see blogging as oppertunity land, and Bettin is just
catching some oppertunities. Everyone else can either
love it or leave it. I like that.
Also, please don't take this to seriously. Its a great
way to generate traffic to my new site.
It would seem some company named Verisign already owns
that domain...
(tongue planted firmly in cheek)
Dave, I'll post a final comment here only and not your
weblog only because... well, at first I was going to say
it fits here best, but come to think of it I will also
add that I feel no desire to add to the traffic on your
site. (Please, nothing personal meant, let me explain.)
I was wrong when I used the word insult. It implies
something much more personal than I ever meant. The
insult I felt was an insult to my intelligence over this
whole hype on the PDC. I commented quite a bit about a
month ago on this in various places and have refrained
since - until now.
Without sounding judgemental of you and your position in
any personal manner... the context from which you speak
simply amazes me. Maybe you belong in this
"select group" like you say, but I
believe I can safely say two things.
First, your employer doesn't think so. At least they
feel they won't receive enough payback from paying your
way. Maybe they are correct in this - in which case it
must be only your opinion that your presense there is
almost mandatory. Maybe they are incorrect about this -
in which case I have to ask why haven't you found better
employment.
Second, if you truely do belong in this select group due
to your talents - and please, I'm not saying you aren't
in this group - then you must not really be doing
something right. Either you are grossly undercutting
your worth and being paid a small fraction of what you
should be, or you simply do not know how to attain
personal financial goals. Part of the 'Career Calculus'
concept means taking responsibility for your own career
and that includes spending that $5000 wisely - including
on the PDC if you are a "select group"
developer and it has value for you.
No matter what though, I wish you well and I apologize
for my poor choice of words.
This reminds me of the spoof emails from a few years
back with the beggar holding the "know HTML,
will code for food" sign.