M.A.C. World Orlando???

I teased Joe Healy (aka DevFish at DevFish.NET) when I first saw the announcement of a "Mother of All Camps" in Orlando.  I shot him an email asking whether they would consider naming the event "MAC World Orlando"?  It seems like the perfect way for a "Developer Evangelist" like Joe to rope in some turtle-neck-wearing converts.  They’d all wander in looking for Steve Jobs to announce the iToaster (or whatever Apple has up their sleeve these days) and Steve Balmer could be on hand instead to give ’em all a big hug and showing them towards the Silverlight…  ;?)

My hat is off to all those involved in getting the "Florida Tweener" event together.  I guess they figured heck…we’ve got the Orlando Convention Center for two weeks in a row for Tech Ed 2008…lots of empty rooms over the weekend in-between Dev vs. ITPro…let’s make use of all that space that’s already paid for.   Sessions planned as I type this are:

For those not familiar with the change…Microsoft’s Tech Ed 2008 is split into two tracks this year.  It used to be only one week and it covered both Developer and IT Pro topics.  This year, week #1 is geared towards Developers and runs June 3-6.  Week #2 is geared to the IT Pros and runs from June 10-13.  I hit Tech Ed 2007 and I can definitely see where they were getting such a massive number of attendees that a means of paring down the numbers was needed.  Additionally, by knocking down the sheer numbers involved, opportunities to have Tech Ed in other cities would also be possible.  I’m guessing that Orlando is one off the few places in the world that can accommodate such a huge event. 

I’m conflicted about this notion of splitting the event up.  As the one-man-band in my department, I am responsible for pretty much anything that even remotely relates to my servers – be it Dev, IT Pro, Database, etc…  Having both Dev and IT Pro events occurring at the same time, as they did in times past, I had a plethora of sessions to choose from and all of the relevant players in-house should I have an issue that cross the Dev/ITPro divide.  It also meant that I had to choose one session over about 4-5 others that I was also interested in for any given time slot.  The best-case scenario training-wise this year would be for me to attend both weeks.  That way I’d get all my bases covered.  This presents some hurdles though.  Attending both weeks would mean that I’d be away from work and home for two weeks in a row (wifey ain’t gonna like that!).  It also means that the cost of attendance jumps from the ~$3,000-4,000 that I budgeted for the conference fees, travel and hotel costs to ~$5,000-6,000+ to cover two weeks worth of hotel costs and admission to both events.  Ouch!!! 

Now, with the Florida Tweener event in the mix, I get yet another choice.  It looks like top-notch offerings that pretty much cover the spectrum.  Hmmm…maybe I’ll skip Tech Ed and just fly down to Orlando for the Tweener event.  Estimated cost ~ $600 for hotels and travel.  Now that’s more like it…

Doug White