Best .NET Development Conference

Question

My employer has offered to send me to any conference I choose this year. I guess I just missed MIX. I went to VSLive last year and enjoyed it quite a bit. I've never been to PDC or TechEd so that's what I'm leaning toward. Am I missing any others?

Answer 1

I would definitely suggest going to Microsoft's PDC if you're an application developer.

MIX is a good conference, but is definitely more geared towards the web crowd.

Answer 2

I would look into the bigger Alt.Net conferences, such as the one in Seattle http://altnetseattle.pbworks.com/ or in Austin (both have passed this year however).

Answer 3

I personally love the MIX conference. I'd ask your employer if you could attend next that next year. I suppose it also depends a lot on what you do. Mix is for web or mobile development. I've been twice and had a blast both times and was exposed to a lot of new technologies. An alternative is to attend a Re-Mix event, its a one day summary event of what happened at Mix this year.

I would recommend PDC, but in the past it hasn't always been an annual event, so who knows if it will happen this year. If it does, look for it in the October time frame. This conference will cover more of the Application Platform vision for the future direction of Microsoft technologies.

South by Southwest is supposed to be a great time with a lot of opportunities to learn, but it has also passed for this year. Its on my short list of conferences to attend in the near future.

The business of software conference is October 4th - 6th this year http://www.businessofsoftware.org/ I've never attended, but I hear good things about it and the sessions.

Answer 4

I go to devlink in Nashville every year. It is a good 3-day conference. I think the VS-Live in Redmond this year would be great but I can't get approval for it. :(

Answer 5

Tech Ed and PDC have almost no overlap. Tech Ed is about things you can go home and use the day you get back. So I have a talk about Visual C++ 2010 and another about managed Windows 7 programming with the Windows API Code Pack. Current, shipping things. PDC covers things a year or more before you can really use them. Often the first announcement of a new technology or your first chance at early beta bits is at a PDC. So very different.

I suggest you take a look through the session catalogs for Tech Ed, PDC, DevConnections, Mix and so on and figure out how many sessions you would actually go to for each conference. Do you care what will be in Visual Studio 11 or 12? Windows 9 or 10? If not, you're probably not going to enjoy PDC. OTOH if you've been using Dev10 since the first beta, you're probably not going to enjoy Tech Ed. Other conferences have more of a mix of new/current though nothing looks as far forward as PDC.

Also it can't hurt to look at speaker names. If there's someone whose blog has always been great for you, or who you enjoy on .NET Rocks, or whatever, and that person is speaking at the conference, that can give you useful information about how likely you are to benefit from the conference.

Answer 6

Norwegian Developers Conference June 2010, QCon San Fran Nov 2010, CodeMash Jan 2011

are all recommended.

Answer 7

Øredev has the greatest reputation in the industry right now with a massive program packed with great speakers. Delegates and speakers alike all feel this conference is different. Vendor neutral and with a huge focus on "Sharing Knowledge". Hallway discussions are recognized as being very good.