Ahmed Salijee

Devdays has always been like showing "TopGun" to a group of high schoolers in the US.
It's there to recruit people.

Myself and my team won't be attending as a result, but I hope that there is good technical content that is not a copy from PDC2003 or TechEd's 04.

Please at least drill down into generics as an example. Or, with respect, present DevDays as a 'if you haven't bothered looking for anything VS-related on the web for the past 2 years'-then-attend type of event.

Comment taken but remember that maybe less than 10 people from SA attended PDC03 and not everyone gets to goto TechED 04 either.

If has to be remembered that not everyone is the same - just as people like different cars or different sports team. Some people will read about new features but might want to see the demos live. Others don't bother about new technologies until it is close to release.

Also Devdays allow developers to interact with each other and form a community. You might even get to have a small side chat or small Q&A interaction with a fellow developer or speaker that can make the day very useful.

If devs want interaction, chances are they are already involved in user groups.

I'd be concerned if there are people out that haven't seen the basic "new things in whidbey" slides.

If someone hasn't, I suggest Googling for "C# generics", "C# nullable types", etc ...

Firstly I will most likely attend if I can find time, if not, too bad. Generally I think most South African developers scour the net looking for information when they can get a chance to. Devdays in my opinion should be a concentrated "whats new and cool" event with international gurus that can actually answer some of the more technical questions and are able to offer guidance to developers where the presentation has sparked some new ideas.

Wow, this seems to be a kinda hot topic. For me, my company won't send me to Tech Ed, or pretty much any paid for training. But they would be prepared to send me on a day long course that's free. That's where Dev Days is useful. I know that just before VS.Net was launched, the DevDays was an AMAZING eye opener to me and to the company I was working for at that stage.

Last years Dev Days had a few highlights, but wasn't that great because I'd seen a most of it before (and I didn't get to win any toys).

Personally I don't think that DevDays is a great community building event for me. Its always come across more like an evangelistic event. I'm not the kind of guy who will walk up to a bunch of strangers and start talking to them, and there isn't really that much opportunity to talk to the presenters after their talks.

I think DevDays are great to get to show off cool toys, and to expand developers horizon's a little bit. Once you've been expanded a few times though, you start reading and learning for yourself, and so you often know about the cool toys before they're shown at DevDays. So DevDays looses its appeal.

"and to expand developers horizon's a little bit." - I agree with Paul, there will be plenty developers at DevDays who's never heard of ie. Team System. It's certainly one of the bigger events in the country and you'll see a lot of developers there that you won't see at any of the smaller events and who wouldn't have had exposure to it.
But, for things like ASP.NET 2.0 and the Winforms track, a bigger percentage of developers have seen intro demos on this and hopefully DevDays will delve into those technologies in more depth. Some informal discussions after the session with the speakers would also be quite useful.
And maybe some brochures ;-)

On the comments
"I'd be concerned if there are people out that haven't seen the basic "new things in whidbey" slides" and
" think most South African developers scour the net looking for information when they can get a chance to"

-- this is not actually true. I get to visit all kinds of developers and one of the biggest mistakes I and others make is to assume that developers know this stuff. There are lots of developers who don't even know the basics of .NET v1 forget about what is coming in V2. The profile and personality of developers who blog is very very different to many other kinds of developers.

A lot of developers can't be bothered to look at .NET v2 until it becomes more finalised. Just today, one of my fellow developers told me that he wouldn't look at using .NET 2.0 or any Microsoft beta.

When it comes to the developers that don't blog, is this the target audience of DevDays 2005, if so, I'll rather skip it. As a matter of interest, is this the kind of developer that actually attends DevDays or is it the blogging kind?

The target audience for Devdays is all developers which means that the sessions need to appeal to a wide base. We have not done enough profiling of the developer base to tell you exactly what kind of developer attends Devdays. We hope that there is something useful for everyone.
The point I was trying to make is that not all developers are the same :-).

Ahmed,
Why not position DevDays as a 'first see' event, giving devs their first look at Whidbey.

At least that will manage the expectations of those attending.

Thanks for the idea. I think that when you the invite it will be more or less obvious that it is a first see but I will bring up the idea

All devs are definately not the same. It seems they can be devided into two crowds - those who keep up by scouring the net, and the rest, who will find DevDays extremely beneficial.
The problem with DevDays is that you're not really getting at your target audience. The people who attend the MSDN type events are generally the same people who stay abreast of developments. I'm not sure how, but you need to create more awareness of DevDays with 'the other crowd'.

all devs are different