How much can you afford? Did you realize that we're not making a profit on the show?
Robert I think 500$ would be a reasonable price but 2000$, no thank you.
I like Microsoft, but in my real world, my rela company don't pay for some fantasy like this one.
It's truely sad but that's the truth !
Paschal, unfortunately, it costs us a lot more than $500 per person to put an event of this size and quality on. Did you know that every Microsoft employee who attends has to pay too? And their group is being charged almost the entire full price.
Have you ever been to a serious developer conference before? (Ala VSLive, or PDC, or TechED?) It doesn't sound like it, since you're calling them fantasies. These are by far the best way to get technical details about bleeding edge technologies.
Robert, yes I was at many many conferences... in Europe !
OK maybe the word fantasies is a bit too much. I love all the technical events, but why not doing something outside the US, when MS pretend to be a worldwide company ?
I missed TechEd this year for the first time, and yes it was expensive too, but the ratio price content was more realistic.
It is a shame that conferences in general cost so much - not a reflection on MS, it's just a fact of life. Perhaps if there were small satelite conferences in Europe with live satelite links?
dont they just post a lot of the information from the conference on the site anyway after its over? Heck there were like 5 MSDN-TV segments from teched on architecture alone... i feel like i was there... so why pay all the $$? It's probably a nice place to be seen and what not but getting the scoop on a "futuristic" product isnt very useful.. unless your company adopts the technology in beta or the first week it comes out (which some people do.. especially those who build components as a business, etc...). I went to the PDC info site and was dissapointed to see the whole thing was on whidbey and yukon because that makes me thinks it's just a week long advertisement for these up-and-coming-cant-live-without products of the future. I would rather spend $$ on a conference that provided me with information that would be valuable using the tools i already made an investment in.
Thats the practical side... the other side of me thinks it would be really cool to be there and see all the new stuff...get a head start on the up-and-coming next wave, etc...
unfortunately the practical side usually pays the bills... ;)
