The one conference I wish I could go to this year

Honestly, it would be Mix 07. I’ve been saving $$$ and hoping PDC (Microsoft Developers Conference) comes to life again but the web development is just too hot to ignore and I wish I had at least gone to this one. Which in a small part is why I’ve decided to sack my conference attendance / speaking schedule over the next year or so; to focus on the work and implementation of ideas I’ve picked up over the past 2 years of conference hopping. Sadly, this is the one I wish I had not missed but I’m sure that the really important stuff will make it to TechEd.

There is also a fair amount of back and forth recently among bloggers debating conference value, costs, content, etc. Basically, conferences are important but being selective is more important than the attendance record. Budget and time permitting, you should attend two conferences a year. One heavilly focused on your craft, one with general content but phenomenal networking opportunities. Conferences are starting to be a harder ticket to sell over the last 2–3 years because of the rise of blogging, podcasting, video blogs and screencasts.  What used to be content only found in big presentations and books is now being offered online, for free, by a community of people that love to share what they figured out because according to Google, nobody else has!

Point is, the rapid rise in podcasting, blogging and video blogs is erroding the overall value conferences present to their attendees because content exclusivity is no longer there.