Hi John -

Thought I'd better jump in on the beginning of this thread, too. <s>

One thing that should be considered here is the "Net Good" another conference does for the community. While "regional" conferences like "Whil-fest", "Val-fest", and what has alternately become know as "Barry-con" have found their niche in the community as cost-effective alternatives to larger conferences, like Advisor DevCon, there is certainly a net-good to be derived from two major national DevCons.

Regional conferences have their own set of advantages. I certainly can't speak for Val or Whil, but I can address it from the viewpoint of my conference. Some of my attendees come from corporate environments while others are independent developers. Both sets of attendees benefit from the fact that my conference occurs (mostly) on the weekend, thereby keeping "lost" hours (whether from missing part of the "8-5" week of the corporate world or lost billable hours to an independent) to a minimum. Furthermore, some of my attendees just can't afford to go to larger conferences.

Let's think about the two larger conferences for the year 2000. The last Advisor DevCon drew about 1200 attendees from the community. If the attendance for the September DevCon falls off by 200-300 (max.) but the May conference attracts 600-700 attendees, so that the total attendance for both conference approaches 2,000 attendees...hasn't the good of the community been served by getting the "word/gospel" to a larger audience, thereby strengthening our numbers?

Barry "I know this will generate a lot of messages" Lee


>IMHO, could be too much of a good thing. Employers have limited training/conference budgets and independents have limited time and money. Although runor has it that there are three conferences in the next year of size, lets just stick to the two DevCons. Suppose attendence goes up, aggregate, by 30% ... That means that each conference has only 65% of the attendees of the formerly one big show.
>
>I guess I'll reserve my final judgement until more details are forthcoming on the New Orleans conference. It's *only* about a 6 hour drive or so for me, but it;ll be tough to pony up about $2,000 out of pocket twice a year (Devcon fees and expenses).
>
>
>>See http://stevenblack.com/webtalk/wc.dll?wiki~VFPDevCon2000
>>
>>for some details. Is this
>>
>>a) too much of a good thing
>>b) the final nail in the coffin for VB :-)
>>
>>2000 is going to be a busy year.