Blogging Reducing the Potential Benefits of the PDC?

I’ll continue the Your Career thread, but with a different twist.  First off, I’m going to the PDC, and as an indie consultant, I’m taking the time off (without pay), and paying my own way.  The major reasons I go to events like this are:

  • Devoting time to learn new technologies – Usually learning a new technology is easy compared with finding the time to learn that technology.  Paying all that money, and also separating myself from the usual distractions helps me concentrate on learning all I can learn.  You can pick up the new technologies from your home, but it takes a dedication that most folks can’t seem to handle.
  • Networking – This is a side effect of going to a conference.  Meeting large amounts of people with a similar desire to learn the technology.  Network can lead to new jobs, or just expanding your techie support structure.  The best consultant aren’t the ones that know everything, but the ones that know the experts that do, and have enough of a relationship with them to get the answers.
  • Influencing the Vendor (MS in this case) - Vendors are always looking to their customers to provide feedback.  How do you give your feedback to a large company like MS if you are just a little fish in a big pond?  Talk to one of their product managers at a conference. 

That’s the way I’ve always approached conferences.  But now with blogging you can effectively perform my last two points all year long, and not need to attend a conference, which then reduces the need to attend something like the PDC.  Blogging doesn’t totally replace the conference, but it does change the cost to benefit ratio.  By blogging, you can actually increase the effectiveness of going to a conference (by having people looking to talk to you, rather than the other way around).  But, now you have an option not to go, and still accomplish my last two points.

I’ll be at the PDC, and because of blogging, it will be a much more cost effective experience, but I know I could elect to not go, and still accomplish most of my goals for the year.  But if I didn’t go, I’d miss partying with all the people I’ve met over the internet, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.

DonXML

[Listening to: Strap It On - Anthrax ]

3 Comments

  • Reading your blog has pretty much convinced me that the PDC would be worth it (I've been a bit of a skeptic about the whole issue).



    I'm starting a new contract on Wednesday, but will be promptly asking the new client if it would be all right to take a few days off to attend.



    If not, then that sucks :)



    If so, then I ought to see you people there.



    Either way, it's sounding like a better deal than it initially did to me...



    You win, Don! Uncle! Uncle!



    Now I'm kind of excited. I hope they say yes...

  • Omer -



    You could also go to user group meetings and visit newsgroups.



    With tens of thousands of employees, there's going to be *some* way to find someone at MS who will listen to you :)



    You have to do some work, though. The ratio of non-MS employees to MS employees on this planet is over 100,000:1. The only way someone at MS is going to know that you have anything to say is if you make yourself heard somehow.



    I haven't paid big money to go to conferences, and I don't have a particularly well-known blog. But, when I complained about the provided deployment options for .NET CF apps in one of my posts, I actually got contacted by someone from MS.



    That struck me as being pretty cool, and I've seen similar things happen in various MS newsgroups.



    It might sometimes feel like nobody is paying attention, but they are...

  • Yes, Microsoft is very good at adapting and extending ideas offered by independent developers who desire better software. Microsoft’s Field Marketing Managers offer corporate clones huge discounts to events like PDC, can they find a way to grant independent developers RSVP codes to ease their financial burden?

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