>I think you've missed the biggest reason attendance is down: businesses aren't making discretionary expenditures. In tough times, the training budget is the first thing to go. $2000 to $2500 is a lot of money in today's economy.
>
>Another reason is that conferences have been showing VFP 8 for months, long before it was released, and it doesn't seem "new" any more.

Lynda;

This is a complex topic and I must agree that the state of the economy has a great deal to do with it. Combine it with the lack of IT programming jobs throughout the nation (any language), the history of Advisor Devcons, along with the history of VFP in the market place and you have the result we now enjoy.

Tom

P.S. My contacts at training companies agree that with a weak economy training is something that gets pushed aside. There is not much going on at training companies in California.