>>Well that is partially true and partially not true. The .net community has begun having code camps all over the US and they are spreading into Europe and Central America now. A code camp is usually a jam-packed 2 day affair with 5 tracks per day and 8-10 presentations per track per day. Lunch and dinner are provided and the quality of information received is extremely high. I have been to three of them in the last 6 months and guess what:

>> * They are free *

>>That beats the hell out of spending 400 - 2000 dollars to attend a foxpro conference. The Boston camp had around 800 participants; the Philly camp 500. How many attended yours?
>
>Hi John,
>
>CodeCamp in June2005 at Sofia, where Ken Levy has pleasure to present 2 sessions was free for 1300 attendees, too.
>But MS spent only for halls 80,000 euro. The cost of all meeting exceed 250K. If atendees have to pay this bill it will be not free and attendees will be not more than 100.
>Small example - Linux community try to repeat it and I just present results of their attempt.
>If CodeCamps are paid much less developers will attend.
>And if on FoxPro confrences there are more than 300 attendees each - it mean that it bring them tramendous value - and they can afford to spend this budget.
>Think about this

Yet another confirmation that "There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"... err... ?CodeCamp? :)
Also, we all know where the free cheese is, right? :)))