Allaire Developer Conference October 99

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Allaire Developer Conference - October 99

• Jeff Austin
• Westat, Inc.
• Matt Schuster
• Office of Thrift Supervision
• U.S. Dept. of the Treasury

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Allaire Developer Conference

• October 24th to October 26th in Boston MA
• 1200 people attended
• 50 Conference lectures and workshops

3
Pluses

• Great topics
• Good keynote by J.J. and Jeremy Allaire
• Good preview of CF Studio 4.5
• Some excellent presenters
• Workshops had fast PCs with 17 inch monitors
• Good chance to meet other developers and vendors
• Virtual reality night at Jillians (like Dave and
  Busters)
• Great Irish pubs and beer
• Great Irish pubs and beer
• Great Irish pubs and beer
• Got to meet Ben Forta, Michael Dinowitz

4
Minuses

• Way too many people for that size conference and
  facility
• Workshops had 2 people per PC
• Workshops, lectures, and lunches were very
  crowded
• Workshops and lectures werent long enough. Only
  1/2 to 3/4 of the material was covered at many
  sessions. Felt very rushed.
• Some topics such as Advanced Security and SQL
  optimization could/should have been half or full
  day sessions.
• Some presenters were unprepared or poor speakers.

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Minuses (contd)

• Not enough days for the number of sessions,
  should have been a three day conference.
• Sessions and workshops werent repeated enough,
  hard to schedule.
• Hotel was not a smoke free environment. Smoking
  in common areas. (Double minus for this one).
• Food was so-so for lunches.
• Not enough time between presentations (5 minutes)
• Couldnt check e-mail (maybe a plus, maybe a
  minus)

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Jeffs Rating of the Conference

• D for day 1 due to good/fair sessions in the
  morning and a horrible workshop and session in
  the afternoon
• A for day 2 due to excellent set of sessions
• C overall due to crowds and smoking

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Matts Rating of the Conference

• C for Monday. Got bumped from a class I had
  preregistered for, but I got 4 T-shirts
• B for Tuesday. Met some of Team Allaire and got
  3 more T-shirts
• C overall. Poor planning for Alliare/developer
  interaction, seemed clickish at times with Team
  Allaire getting special treatment (and not us)

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Summary

• OK first conference
• Need to fix crowding, smoking, and time
  allocations at next years conference
• Better prepared instructors and better
  connectivity for users needed.