Feels like there are millions of conference that developers need to go every year. There is the MIX2010 that by the way Shawn Wildermuth will be presenting. If you haven’t been to one of his presentations, you are up for a treat, he is a Silverlight genius yet he can communicate it better than any one I know.

We have the big PDC in LA most of the time to bring developers to show what’s coming out. Those are expensive conference that get you out of the office to meet other developers in the same situation than you, yet, my question, are they really good for your career and knowledge? What do you really learn on those besides what’s coming out and how cool can you make something look with a good presentation?

My modest and personal opinion is those conferences won’t bring you anything you can substantially see, no now nor in the future. There are big shows by companies to serve some marketing schema. Its good for your boss to go, not for the developer. For developers we have the PDC Underground and the code camps. If you are asking yourself if I’m going to the PDC or the MIX, the answer is no, I didn’t go nor I’ll go to the PDC as well as I gave my sit at the MIX to my boss. Sad I’ll be missing the presentation about ASP.NET MVC 2.0 from Phil Haack.

Code camps is everything a developer needs, bring your computer and mingle with the experts presenting, asked them to help you out with your code, open your laptop and see them writing code with you. Let developers present for you and share your knowledge with them. In the same line with code camps, we have also the Summits, where developers also get together. I’m talking about the ESRI Developer Summit as well as the Microsoft MVP Summit.

For those 2, it will be my third year attending both. Both will have developers everywhere learning and sharing information, both will have presentations by developers learning new technologies and as the presentation happens, laptops and netbooks will be open to capture every single bit of code.

If is your first time at the MVP Summit these are a few tips for you that will help you make the best of.

• Sign up with twitter and enable the geocode section, so you can use it and find people and presentations, the MVP Summit has many things happening at the same time and is important not to miss what you are looking for.
• Ask your MVP Lead, has all the information and knows every single detail, if you are an ASP.NET MVP you know your lead will go an extra mile to make sure you get the information you need.
• Find the rock starts, as you walk around the Summit, you’ll see familiar faces from blogs and conference, don’t be shy and introduce yourself, they are there to share as much as you are.
• Find the underground meet up after the schedule, there are always meet ups for different technologies after the dinners, those are great times when wanting to talk geek.

I’ll be this year blogging almost real time, I’m not expecting to find lots of NDA presentations hopefully. Keep an eye on my twitter or the hashtag #mvp10 at Twitter.

Cheers

Al