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Is the Professional Developers' Conference an anachronism?

Having in a Quote of the Week - 2 expressed criticism of Microsoft marketing, I guess I may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb!

It seems to me that the upcoming Professional Developer's Conference is an anachronism.

Why do I say that?

I think that such conferences are anachronistic on several levels but in this entry I will focus simply on how an anachronistic approach to PDC potentially damages information sharing. Since I assume that PDC has a marketing component and that all marketing should be primarily customer-focussed this seems to me, at one level, to be a failure of marketing.

If we assume that a primary purpose of PDC is to enable developers to develop solutions for Longhorn it seems logical that the information that developers need is imparted or shared as effectively as possible.

Yet, if I understand the PDC program correctly, the program will follow a sequence that would, in essence, have been possible with the technology of 50 years ago!

An audience is expected to arrive without access to preparatory information and to, largely, sit while presenters ... well ... present. At the end of presentations there will be an opportunity for questions.

This seems to me to be inherently unimaginative and inefficient, and to miss out on potential benefits of more recent technologies.

A potentially much more effective approach would be to make Webcasts of upcoming presentations available to registered attendees for, say, two weeks before the PDC and during the PDC. This would give participants the opportunity to get up to speed on topics of interest and be much better informed in order to take advantage of the unique aspect of a PDC - access to Microsoft developers for face to face discussions to explore interesting aspects of upcoming technologies such as SQL Server Yukon, Visual Studio Whidbey and Windows Longhorn.

Similarly, Webcasts would allow attendees to check out sessions that clash with priority sessions.

Of course, some PDC attendees will already be on the alpha or beta programs for Whidbey and Yukon and will have hands on experience of selected technologies. But for other attendees ... the majority? ... an opportunity to get up to speed on upcoming technologies before travelling to PDC would be a significant improvement on the current approach. It would give them a much better opportunity to take advantage of face to face discussion with Microsoft developers at PDC.

I realise that PDC will, to some extent, be exploring new technology such as a range of blogging of PDC on PDC Bloggers . Yet a more imaginative use of Webcasts both before and during PDC could enable attendees to get much more benefit from attendance. It might also make the face to face discussions more interesting and stimulating for Microsoft staff, since there would be fewer of the repeat basic questions from attendees and an opportunity for significantly deeper discussions.

Such face to face discussion time is, or so it seems to me, one of the most valuable parts of a big conference. Surely it makes sense to use technology to maximise the achievable exchange of information?

Yes, it would probably mean more work for presenters. But isn't the customer supposed to be king?