devLink 2009 – THE GREATEST DEVLINK EVER!!!!

Yes, I said it! Actually, I am just repeating what I keep hearing from people who took the time to attend. Personally, it was the best event for me and the devLink team has expressed the same. With the economic climate today we were not expecting such great attendance, but we saw approximately 675 attendees from across the United States and Canada, as well as the United Kingdom and Denmark. It never ceases to amaze me how many folks are willing to invest in themselves to improve their skills out of their own pocket.

This year we added an extra day, extending devLink from a Friday-Saturday event to a Thursday - Saturday event. We always try new things each year and this year we made the first day a series of In-depth (3 hour) sessions intended to get people up to speed on a given topic. Overall it was pretty successful, but I think we can improve on this a little next year. Chicken Nick’s catered our lunch and had some amazing chicken strips which everyone was raving about.  We invited comedian Rik Roberts to perform during lunch on Thursday to give everyone a smile and get them ready for the afternoon sessions which he did wonderfully.

Microsoft's Josh Holmes wrapped up the event for Thursday with his thought provoking keynote "The Lost Art of Simplicity". Then it was off to the VIP dinner where we welcome our speakers and thank them for committing their time to the event, along with some lucky attendees who get to come.

The second day of devLink was back to the regular session schedule and we had plenty to keep people busy.  We had a little hiccup for lunch when our other lunch vendor deliver only half of our order and people had to wait for the second delivery. It would have been a disaster at any other event, but our attendees were so gracious and understanding it was surreal. I put Keith Elder on the spot and told him it was his job to keep the people waiting on the food happy. For those who don't know Keith he is a very charismatic guy and he had people playing musical chairs, red rover and singing songs. Of course, giving him some prizes to give away probably didn't hurt either. I think we may need to book him as one of our entertainment options in the future. When the food finally arrived the manager gave a personal apology to all the attendees and we got everyone fed. 

Once sessions wrapped up on Friday several attendees made their way to the Nashville Sounds baseball game for the devLink attendee party. We had the entire party deck full of folks enjoying burgers, hot dogs and BBQ along with the game. It was a great time and Nashville won the game.  Early in the evening we crowded everyone on the lower deck for a group picture (shown below).

Saturday rounded out the conference with another full day of sessions.  We wrapped up the conference this year with DotNetRocks hosting a speaker panel for the event.  It was a great discussion on whether software development had become too complex.  At one point the line at the microphones were five people deep.  Richard and Carl helped us give away the conference prizes with the 64-bit question contest which everyone enjoyed thoroughly.  

So that is a quick rundown of how devLink 2009 went.  It would not be possible without a number of great volunteers like John Baker, Jason Clark, Bryan Meyer, Rachel Twyford, Amy Boegh, Colin Neller, Randy Walker, Keith Elder, Alan Stevens, Evan Hoff, Robbie Mansfield, Rebel Bailey and many more.  Even more devLink would not happen without the support of Leanna Baker who works her butt off all year long and puts up with me. 

While this may have been the best devLink ever, it was also one of the toughest to put on. With the economic climate today we saw a drop in sponsors ability to support the event.  We don’t want to turn devLink into a $1500 conference, actually we never will, but it takes sponsors to make the event available for $100 per person.  So I have to mention these companies because their contributions as sponsors were crucial to putting on our event this year.

Vaco Technology was a tremendous factor in us putting the event on this year

Microsoft is a long time supporter and continued to be a major help to us this year

DataDirect is another long time supporter of the event and keeps coming back time and time again

Infragistics joined us as a major sponsor for the first time this year sending Jason Beres down for not only a vendor session, but we were able to fit him in for a regular session as well. We hope to see them again next year.

As the big conferences see their numbers drop lower and lower, events like devLink are growing.  So next year is tenatively scheduled for August 5, 6 and 7, 2010 and we are already planning for it.  If you have something/someone that you would love to see at devLink, please feel free to contact me anytime.