>>There are very few topics I can sit for 75 minutes and have someone lecture me with PPT slides and actually learn anything.
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>Is the intent to learn something, or to know what the technology can do and what the possibilities are while you can research the details when you get home? My perspective is obviously different, in that I look at sessions as an opportunity to see what hot new stuff is available and what it can do. If I need implementation details, I'll look it up when I get home.
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Mike, using the last DevCon as an example, sessions like the .Net technology briefing, Calvin's Accessibility session, and Steve Black's phenomenal OO Heuristics session fit the 75 minute technology familiarization model to a tee - I'm there to get the concepts, and when I've at least got a toehold on what's there, I can research things myself. OTOH, a whole lot of sessions, especially those targeted at specific "How To" topics, really need a more hands-on approach; I want to try it myself, get my hands messy, maybe try a simple example on my laptop or in my head and on paper. Actually applying what is being demo'd cements the subject - the same idea behind doing labs in hard sciences, where we learn the practical aspects of all the theory we had crammed down our necks in class (I remember more from my lab work in Organic Chemistry, Applied Physics and Psychoacoustics as an undergrad than I did the materials presented at lecture). My senior thesis working in a lab taught me infinitely more regarding pattern recognition and cognitive event resolution than I retained from traditional lecture-based upper-level courses in my major.
If nothing else, after a year of real research lab work, I knew I really liked computers and simulations, and didn't have what it took to become an MD.
>> To me, the current DevCon session formats are really only suitable for
>>previews and overviews.
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>It's a format that suited me just fine back when I was working outside of the Death Star.
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For me, a week of COM Boot Camp at DevelopMentor taught me infinitely more about COM and its plumbing in 6 days than months of readings and lectures, but DevelopMentor works you to exhaustion - small classes, 12 hour days and their ratio of staff to students is very high, and much of the course is taught hands on in the lab, actually writing code based on the material presented at lecture and in readings. It's expensive, but I got every penny's worth out of it; they offer a wide range of courses, primarily targeted at experienced C and VB developers.
>>I'd like to see sessions where attendence was limited to 20 people. Everyone brings a laptop and the presenter leads everyone through the topic
hands on with the last 20 minutes or so instructor-led experimentation with the topic.
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>My only problem with such a format would be that Mary Hotshot has to sit there twiddling her thumbs while Joe Numbskull repeatedly asks time-consuming questions because he just doesn't "get it". To avoid a situation where the inmates run the asylum, it would take a presenter who is more skilled in teaching a class rather than being used to speaking uninterrupted.
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20 is too many people, and you need to establish a threshhold of knowledge and experience for attendees; eg this is not for the guy who's barely finished his first app with the App Wizard, or doesn't offer as much challenging material for the person who's already been there, done that, and owns the tee-shirt concession...
A practicum with at least a competent instructor per 6-12 attendees in the lab, and lecture sessions for 20-30 people in the audience would be great, but doing this is expensive, and qualifying instructors would be a tough task...I may know a fair amount, but I don't have the patience needed to deal with teaching people very new to programming and formal logic.
>However, despite my perspective or objections, I think there is a place for such sessions. How many of us take the laptop back to the room, or get home to the desktop, only to find that we can't make it work like the expert did in the PowerPoint slides? A "hands-on" session could very well be worthwhile, I suppose.
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I'm one of these, and I distinctly remember attending an MS Tech presentation on Access where someone asked what the optimum software platform for demoing Access apps would be, and the (now former) MS employee said "PowerPoint".
>Off-topic PowerPoint-related sidenote: typing this reminded me of a comment from a coworker: "we ought to make PowerPoint our main OS, since all of our apps seem to run better on PowerPoint than any of our real OSs." :-)
