Ean Schuessler wrote:
I've been to a *lot* of developer oriented conferences over the years and I can tell you with some confidence that they are not a good place for finding new customers or bringing around novice users. Even cheap conferences are well out of the price range of most casual adopters. The important and transformative phenomena that can happen is great, densely packed technical discussion that achieves in hours what might take weeks on a mailing list. The other important thing I've seen happen is a "dev jam" where major new features are sketched up or long standing bugs are squashed. Having all the major players sitting together in the same room for 8 to 10 hours does have an effect that is hard to replicate otherwise.
That describes perfectly my experience with the 2007 Developers Conference. I would like to see that happen again soon.
