I have started planning for VSLive Orlando 2004.  I am responsible mainly for the ASP.NET track.

Several changes will be happening with this iteration of the conference. 

1. I think this is the right timing to start ramping up on ASP.NET 2.0 content. I have no idea on release dates other than the Visual Studio 2005 name that was announced.  Since this conference will be happening in September the timing seems right that a beta will have shipped by this point and users will be starting to get on board.  That being said I think the majority of folks will be still developing with ASP.NET 1.x.  Some content needs to be maintained for them.  It will be a tricky balance given a total of 10 sessions to shoe horn the content into.
2. I think existing .NET adoption falls into two camps based on technology.  I think the ASP.NET guys tend to be a bit ahead of the curve based on shorter development cycles, the fact that they don't require any client side installs, etc.  Hence most developers have already made the move.  Whereas I think many Windows Forms developer types are just starting to make the move or have made it recently. Based on this my thought is that all ASP.NET 1.x content should move squarely into the Intermediate-Advanced realm while the ASP.NET 2.0 content is more Intro-Intermediate.  Does this make sense?

What are peoples thoughts on the split?  50/50?  60/40?

In addition I have a mission in mind to get more new speakers involved.  This can be a two edged sword. Speakers that I have worked with in the past are a known quantity.  I know quite a bit about their speaking abilities as well as how audiences react to them.  A new speaker is always a crapshoot.  I firmly believe however that we need new blood. This new speaker thing is also complicated by the way speakers are compensated.  They are compensated per session and as a previous speaker I feel that I need to give each speaker at least two sessions.  This means that I have a grand total of 5 speakers for VSLive Orlando.  I wish I could have more but that isn't my choice.

So with all of that in mind I am interested in two additional things.  What do people want to see related to ASP.NET?  Give me both 1.x and 2.x topics. Which speakers do you want to see?  Help me figure out how to create a conference that you will want to attend.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004 2:24:22 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)         Comments [0]