>>>>>Have some money to go to a conference, would the Jan/Feb VBITS be the place to go? I have been tinkering with VB for 3 years, time to go hardcore.
>>>>
>>>>Another great place to go from october 1 to 4, is to the VB Connections (http://www.devconnections.com) in Arizona. Anybody planned to go there?
>>>
>>>How would you rate the courses offered vs VBITS.
>>
>>These international conferences are all at the same level. They have most of the same speakers and speakers redo much of the same presentations from one to the other!
>>
>>If you see Microsoft speakers at an event, you can say that the event is going to be good!
>
>Is the VBits SF still the biggest kid on the block? Any advantages to going to a big vs small Vbits?

I think that the biggest is still TechEd Orlando. I can't compare VBITS between them since I've been only to the New York one in 97. If you compare schedule from one to another, it is much the same thing. Only the number of guests is changing.

The best conferences are those which are near a new product release because you may have beta version to practice. I just come from a MSDN presentation which talks about VS7 but I can't use it today! The day it will be available, chances are that I will have forgot the details!