EKON / CodeRage II face-to-face or virtuell...

Today I noticed from Anders Ohlssen in the borland-newsgroups that everyone can submit abstracts for the next CodeRage from CodeGear.
There are no new informations about a BorCon or with new word "CodeGearConf"... I hope CodeGear will plan a conference like in the past with BorCon..... but I don't know and haven't find any public information about a timefrime or location for an US-BorCon.

And Marco Cantu have in his "News #3 - September 21, 2007" the same informationstatus:
* No CodeGear US conference planned so far. I'm toying with the idea
of setting up a small Delphi event myself. Maybe I'll give it a go in Europe first, though.

There are only informations about a brasilian BorCon in October this year.

As posted in my blog from yesterday, I spoke on the EKON11 this year again and my feeling about THE face-to-face-conference in Europe for CodeGear-Tools is only two days old .....

What is the better way to transfer the know-how or new features of the new version of Delphi from speaker to attendees .....

I have looked into some sessions from the CodeRage in spring this year and visited on the EKON some sessions.....

I think you can't say "face-to-face" or "virtuell" is better then the other....
We're all int the IT and know the decision tables.... well, I will start with some advantage and disadvantage of both possibilities of making a conference. Feel free and add your ideas here.

CodeRage-Way:

+ every developer of the world can visit this conference
+ every "attendee" can better choose the tracks which are interesting (after download of the replays)
+ speakers from all over the world can make sessions, thanks to the internet and the connectivity over them!
+ speaker who don't love the publicity, meaning talking about stuff in a room with xxx attendes, will prefer this way and submit sessions and transfer their know-how!
+ cheaper for the organisation / sales departmnet of the company
+ cheaper for the attendes
+ indepent from the count of attendees
+ you can organize the time for the sessions better, just-in-time-presence is possible


--- you haven't social contact to other developers
-- you don't expand your "developers"-network and offers sometimes an ideal plattform to expand your business with other (programming, training, consulting) .
-- loosing of the feeling and wishes in the (delphi-)community for the developers in Scotts Valley (how will they get the wishes from us, the customers ??)
- there are different timezones in the world, somewhere in the world you must visit the session at 03:00 am and work on the next day @work
- you don't see the speaker / trainer and loose some non-verbal informations...
- IMO there are more ppt/pps-related sessions and not "live coding"


BorCon/EKON- Way

++ sessions are more for the people in the room because everyone can ask everytime and "interrupt" the session and the speaker can explain the way to solve; especially in the advanced sessions interesting...
++ in-deepth-sessions or advanced session with experts on both sides are possible, e.g.
+ workshops and codecamps available, I haven't any idea how this could be realize in the virtuell way ?!
+ discussion on the end of every session and after the session in the lobby
+++ talks, discussion in the lobby, at restaurant with speakers, attendees;
+++ talk with employees of CodeGear in the lobby (face-to-face talk with DavidI and NickHogdes) and they get a good feedback and wishes of the customers.... It's great that on the EKON or BorCon (I remember interesting talks, e.g. with BlakeS about C++, with Charlie Caro about InterBase, Steve Shauhgnessy about databases in San Jose on BorCon03, DavidI in US or Europe, NickHodges, and a lot of other CodeGear-guys on conferences, book-writers (e.g. Marco Cantu, Dr.Bob...) and guys from 3rd-party-companies, like DevExpress, Gnostice, Nevrona, AToZed, )
+ see other areas and countries, like California

- you must spend the complete conference time and have only 4-6 interesting sessions for your work (but if you use the time you can look into other "uninteresting sessions" and, heh, I haven't know the things I can solve this or this and I'll use it in my developers-work in the future ).
- expensive for the attendes, costs of hotel, flight,
- not easy to calculate the costs on the side of the organisation team, will be there 50, 500 or 5.000 attendes and 5,50,100 speakers on the conference.

Attention: this list isn't complete and in the correct (what is here correct?) order......just writing in on step!

Overall I'll prefer the EKON-way and see all the other developers and talk with them (not only about programming, yeah there are other things in the world to talk about, @Matthias I haven't forgot the D1 thing and the pictures!!) . The CodeRage-way is in my opinion a good addition to a real conference and great for developers to get knowledge about basics of new techniques and see trends and hypes in the programming world, but not an alternative to the face-to-face-conference.


What do you think about this two ways ??????


-take care

:-) thomas