Welcome to Ian's PDC 05 Blogs
PDC 05 is Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, and this year over 6000 developers from around the globe will be converging on Los Angeles in California to get the details of Microsoft's plans for the next few years.
The event doesn't take place every year - just when Microsoft have some major new announcements to make, and this year they have an absolute deluge of new products to launch. This will be my first PDC event. Microsoft hold a similar event, TechEd, every year, which is held initially in the States and then repeated in Europe and ANZAC. I've attended a couple of the European TechEd events in the past, where my general impression has been that they're fun events to attend, but not necessarily the best value for money if you're looking for 'training' rather than a conference experience.
Where TechEd attracts staff from across the whole IT industry, and tends to focus on the near term (the next six to twelve months), PDC is more focussed on the longer term (2 years or so) and is aimed exclusively at developers.
I suspect the advantages of attending PDC are much like those of attending TechEd - an excuse to network, find out a bit more about the new technologies and to get re-enthused about the industry we work in. I'll be blogging over the next few days of the event to document whether these suspicions prove correct.
Blog Reports
- 9th September - PDC, Here I Come
- 10th September - God Bless America
- 11th September - Registration and Channel 9 Dinner
- 12th September - Pre-con Workshop: ASP.NET 2.0 and Channel 9 Drinks
- 13th September - First Day Sessions and PDC Underground Grok Talks
- 14th September - Second Day Sessions and Universal Studios Party
- 15th September - Third Day Sessions
- 16th September - The Final Day
