Is VSLive! worth it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daniel Billingsley
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Daniel Billingsley

My company is interested in a "jumpstart" for me in going from VB6 to C#
(.NET of course). I just came across an old mailer for VSLive in Orlando,
which starts next week.

Can anyone give some feedback on this. Obviously, it would be a bit of a
pain to get down there next week out of the blue, so I want to make sure
it's a good investment.

How does VSLive! compare to Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference?
From looking at the materials and speakers it looks like VSLive is a bit
less likely to just give the Microsoft perspective of things. Some of the
Microsoft MSDN stuff I've been to in the last few years seems to like to
rehash the same issues - why Web Services will save the world for example -
and not necessarily get all that much into the meat-and-potatoes of building
enterprise applications. VSLive seems to be more geared towards that, at
least if you jump do something like combine some of the C# and VBITS tracks.

Aside from these two, is there another recommended seminar or method for
jumpstarting my knowledge? Here's a couple examples of specifically what
I'm trying to accomplish.

I am interested in developing a component based approach - what MS used to
call Windows DNA I suppose. In VB6 I found starting with Rocky Lhotka's
book on business objects and tweaking it for my needs to be very effective
in taming the learning curve. I note that Rocky has a few sessions at
VSLive! apparently dealing with this.

I also see a VBITS session on "Best Practices for Deployment". I imagine
after weeks of experimentation I would reach many of the same conclusions I
could be told in an hour seminar.

These are the kinds of things I mean by "jumpstart".

Any thoughts? Anyone?
 
First of all, VSLive is promoted by people that are notorious for not paying
their speakers and magazine authors. I had to use Dunn and Bradstreet's
collection services to get paid my fees for speaking at VSLive Orlando last
year. I know of other speaker/authors that were in the same boat. Today I
wouldn't cross the street to attend VSLive.

If you want to learn about what's coming up in the next few years, go to the
PDC. There's no other event that comes close to the technical content of a
PDC if you're a Windows developer.

If you want to learn about developing and deploying current products, go to
TechEd.

If you miss those, go to WinDev.

If you miss all of those, take a guerilla course from DevelopMentor.
 
Thanks for your input.

I think you've confirmed my conclusions about PDC based on reading the
summary descriptions. I've been to plenty of MS dog and pony shows and,
while they're useful for what they are, that's definitely not what I'm
looking for here. I'll check out the other events you mention.
 
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