Different part of the world means a different DevDays...apparently......

  • Article

I've seen a few posts in the blogosphere regarding the DevDays events that have occurred throughout the world. The one thing that is very apparent is that you are not guaranteed to see the same content or even get the same “goodie bag” from one DevDays to another. In fact, you are not even guaranteed to have paid the same price. I'll be honest and tell you that, while I have a few ideas of why this is the case, I'm not involved in the planning of DevDays throughout the world so I'm not going to speculate.

UPDATE: This post gives us a good idea why the DevDays in Belgium was different than others - “Microsoft Belgium decided to bring together their 2 major technical audiences (developers and IT professionals) in one big event: the Microsoft Belgium Developer & IT Pro Days 2004.” 

However, I'm interested in hearing what you folks think about the differences? I mean, does it make sense that they are different? Do you think there is value in customizing the content for the geography? What about the other differences - “goodie bags”, etc.?

We want this event to be a great event throughout the world so I'm interested in what could be done to improve it.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2004
    Ahh The Republic Ireland (the free state) the call center captial of the world, next to India.

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2004
    About the Belgian Dev & IT Pro Days 2004...
    1. THE GOOD...
    The sessions and speakers (Ingo Rammer, Clement Vasters, etc.) were great.

    2. THE BAD...
    The content of the goodie bag, in comparision with what was offered at other places, was poor: no OpenHack, no IssueVision, no Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Evaluation Edition, no Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET Resource Kit CD, no ASP.NET Resource Kit CD, no Microsoft® Office InfoPath™ 2003 Trial CD and Developer Resources DVD, no Complimentary .NET Connected Logo Test ($400 Value).

    3. THE UGLY...
    The food was a disaster!
    - No promised vegetarian buffet.
    - Not enough, especially on the first day; if your session ended later, all dishes were empty, and there was no refill...
  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2004
    As the organizer of the Belgian Developer & IT Pro Days I really want to comment on this, because this comment is completely contradictory to all other feedback we get. We admit though the catering problem on the first day.

    The GOOD: That the sessions were great is the best feedback we can get, because I think that's why people attend an the event. I have never attended an event for catering and goodies.

    The BAD: In the attendee package, I think we had valuable stuff like the Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey" bits, people could order the Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit for free, we have handed out books, and last but not least we even offer the "Longhorn" bits via our online evaluation. Further, instead of going to events to collect all the trial editions of our products, an MSDN subscription would be the ideal solution; all products, beta and final are included.

    The UGLY: About the catering; the food was not a diaster, there was just nog enough at noon on the first day. We are dealing with our caterer directly because we have seen the issue as well and are trying to figure out what happenend. We ordered according to the 1.000 attendees. Further, we have added immediately in the afternoon everything that was still availiable from the caterer (600 extra sandwiches). Further, we offered all the attendees a warm buffet at the end of the sessions and lots of food was left over. On the second day we controlled everything and we have seen that there were sandwiches left during the whole day. On both days we even offered breakfast. Further there was a vegetarian corner as requested.

    Were you happy with the fact that we have put all presentations and code online? Even before the event so that people could choose which sessions to follow upfront. Was the fact that we have 6 parallel tracks enough for you? Were you happy with the fact that we had experts like David Chappell, Steve Riley, Lester Madden, Nigel Watling, Ingo Rammer, Clemens Vasters, Tim Sneath, Astrid Hackenberg, Jonathan Whiteman, John Craddock, Justin Alderson, Gianpaolo Carraro ... Were you happy that we organized 2 Hands-on Labs were you could try Whidbey and mobility features?

    I am happy to answer any more questions if necessary.
  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2004
    I attended the Sydney/Australia combined one day event - as an architect I was torn between the Dev stream or the sysmgmt/security stream. I went with the sysmgmt/sec stream which was good - but I missed a lot of interesting stuff in the dev stream. As the event was a one day per city thing, the only way for me to get the other stream was to go another city which was not feasible.
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2009
    PingBack from http://insomniacuresite.info/story.php?id=8079
  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2009
    PingBack from http://castironbakeware.info/story.php?title=alex-lowe-s-net-blog-different-part-of-the-world-means-a-different
  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2009
    PingBack from http://fixmycrediteasily.info/story.php?id=11261