The best conference I have been to is Microsoft Tech-Ed North America. It is widely considered to be one of the best technology conferences in the world. For many people it is the one conference they go to in a year.
I often ask people what they think the best technology conferences are and the two most common answers I hear are #1 Microsoft Tech-Ed North America and #2 Microsoft PDC. In addition to CF and Flex, I work heavily with Microsoft products, like SQL Server, SSIS, ASP.NET, Reporting Services, etc, so the Microsoft conferences have a lot of appeal to me. If you don't work with any MS products, then the MS conferences would be mostly irrelevant to you. Some other notable MS-related conferences are Mix, SQL Pass, VSLive, DevTeach, and DevConnections. DevConnections is great for SQL Server since the database track is run by the SQLSkills team, who are arguably the best SQL Server trainers in the industry. I've personally learned a lot from the sessions taught by Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randall. To give you a sense of scale, a large conference like NAB or CES can involve over 100,000 attendees and staff, Tech-Ed has around 10,000 attendees, MAX has around 5,000 attendees, and CFUnited has around 500 attendees. I am going to CFUnited in a couple weeks, although for me it is a relatively short drive from where I live. If one of your main goals is to learn the new CF 9 features, I think the best sources are the manual, the developers guide, and the various white papers, articles and blog posts, all of which are free. Check out this list of conferences. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/21/web-conferences-roundup-events-from-around-the-globe/ Have fun! -Mike Chabot http://www.linkedin.com/in/chabot On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Andrew Clarke <s...@clarke.ca> wrote: > > I posted a similar question on cf-community a week or two ago, but it sort of > got buried and only got one response (thanks ** Private ** for your response). > > I understand this is probably a loaded question, but what are peoples' > opinions on the "best" conference to attend? I've been developing ColdFusion > apps for about 13 years now and have most of the features that have been > around for a while down pretty well. However, I have only one client using > CF8, and am just in the process of installing CF9 for my first client right > now. I'd love to especially learn how people are using some of the new > features in CF9, as well as Railo. > > I've never gone to a CF conference as I've always found conferences to be a > waste of time and money. However, looking over Adobe Max, it looks like > there might be some interesting talks. CFUnited looks cool too, but I'm > heading out of the country for 5 weeks starting early August, so I can't > really take off for a conference at the end of this month. I'd only be able > to swing CFUnited, maybe, maayyybe, if the clear consensus is that it's far > far better than anything else. It would be a huge push though to get down > there this month, and pre-registered by July 15. > > If you were a fairly advanced developer, looking to pick up some good > esoteric skills, discuss security, and meet the greater community, which > conference would you pick? The one that was suggested to me was NCDevCon. > It seems a bit too Flash/UI-based whereas I'm more of a backend person. > > Thanks, > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:335390 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
