The Mail Owl Scrolls

please not another marketing exercise
show us something practical!

To Arno: It seems that the thread is locked, so I'm RSVP'ing here. I'll be there.

To Franklin: Have you been to any of the SA Dev user group meetings in the past few months? Not one of them has been marketing based. I'd love to know what made you think that SA Dev meetings were more "marketing" and less development oriented. (And I'm not trying to be silly, I'd REALLY love to know it so that I can understand where you're coming from)

I know that Dev Days and the MSDN Essentials type meetings can come across as pretty limited on the development side, but that's what the Level's are there for, plus they're Microsoft owned meetings so there's bound to be some marketing, and often you'll find newbies to technology need that kind of info.

If you take Mario's talk on Serialization at SA Dev, it was most definately not for the newbie developer (although I think a newbie would have been fine in the meeting). Also SA Dev is not Microsoft owned, so doesn't have to market any of their technology.

Anyway, before I ramble on, please let me know what experience you had of an SA Dev meeting that was too focussed on marketing talk and not on Dev talk. (You can contact me via my blog)

Hrm... I think that "To Arno" should have been "To Andre". :( Sorry.

I will be there, of course.

As useful as it may be (personally I believe otherwise), I think the employment of MS's level rating system should probably be avoided for SADev events since it contributes to the incorrect perception that they are in control of the meetings.

Besides, what is wrong with Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced? Call it like it is...

Hmm, I haven't thought about it before? Perhaps it's my inner-plagiarist. Beginner / Intermediate and Advanced is also good although I don't want to deter junior programmers from attending a good advanced topic and vice versa. Let's chat about it next week at the meeting!

I am keen however to keep away from the perception that SA Developer is MS owned, so I definately welcome suggestions.

I will make an appearance too. Finally :P