Comments on: Getting the Mix06 conference value yet?

By: Alex Barnett blog

Alex Barnett blog — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:10:45 +0000

Mix06 - that’s a wrap!

Here’s some Mix06 day 2 and 3 pics, links and stuff…
Scott Guthrie’s presentation went down well -…

By: Was it worth attending Mix06? at seattleduck | kevin briody

Was it worth attending Mix06? at seattleduck | kevin briody — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 03:12:24 +0000

[…] TDavid makes a fairly convincing argument that you could get most of the value from Mix06 by simply staying at home and watching the videos, blog posts, etc. I’m increasingly inclined to agree – so much live blogging, backchannels, and attendee commentary enables you to follow the action from your couch for the most part. […]

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:31:12 +0000

Thanks for the feedback, Hugh. Microsoft is in my backyard and I have contacts for several helpful M$ folks there. I’m definitely not the only small developer with contacts up there, so I’m not special or anything. It’s not tough for developers to communicate with them so going to one of these more expensive conferences (I realize some may not think that $995 plus the other expenses is that much money, but for small businesses this very well might be the marketing budget for the month or quarter) doesn’t really change the communication part as far as that goes, but I do see what you are saying. The face to face meet can open doors and help get a response quicker than some random name on an email.

Then again, I can go to the regional events that they offer for free or less expensive events and meet many of these same people (not Mr. Gates) there.

That’s another thing which I didn’t really hit on in this piece. Many of the same people are at these conferences. You go to a couple of them and you’ve met pretty much everybody that does conferences. It’s a smaller world than it seems.

For a small business budgeting is imperative. So the inevitable question: would our business get more out of the $1,000 staying home or spending on say an Adcenter or Adwords campaign?

By: Hugh

Hugh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:47:04 +0000

You have a lot of valid points. Certainly for those with tight budgets, the conference fee plus hotel plus etc is a big chunk of change.

On the other hand here is some of the value for in-person
1. See the presentations, see the audience reaction (roll eyes, smile politely, enthusiastic clapping)
2. Microsoft had a developer sandbox area where you could get hands-on time with Atlas, Vista, XAML, etc. If you get stumped you can ask friendly MS geeks for help. Yes one could download all this stuff and install Virtual PC and go through the manual but the difference is between 4 hours of such versus 20 minutes of high-quality info
3. For non-developers, you can simple get hands-on with Vista on a real machine, get the full experience. Also a number of Origami machines
4. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks with other attendees. Random connections from people. A cute geekette resembling Sandra Bullock. A colleague from a job 10 years back, now into some cool stuff.
5. FWIW, the Vegas experience… not my cup of tea but possibly your shot of Jack Daniels.