This post is in a response to a DevTeach/SQLTeach attendee Scott Stonehouse that asked my to elaborate on the differences I saw at each conference (DevTeach and TechDays or TechTeach and DevDays, or TeachDays etc).

First lets get some full disclosure out of the way. I know and collaborate with the Team at Microsoft Canada who put together the Canadian version of TechDays. I engage with them as an MVP, as a User Group leader, and when they have 2 minutes in town they’re known to stop for a pint or two at the local pub.

I’m also know Jean Rene Roy who is the founder and principle stake holder for DevTeach. I count him as a great friend, and someone who literally gave me my start speaking at conferences.

Now lets start by what is similar because I want everyone to know that everyone I have mentioned are terrific people. They are passionate about IT, Servers, Development, and are adamant professionals that balance family, jobs, and giving back to the IT community in so many ways. So both conferences reflected a deep commitment to bringing the IT and developers professionals together to network and learn.

Now let me address the differences. With the understood caveat that this is my opinion and only my opinion.

TechDays: This year Microsoft Canada decided to change up the way they engages with IT pros and Developers. Instead of running a single day road show which would typically be held in a movie theater or 1 large presentation room in a hotel they decided to hold a more in depth multiday ( in several cities a single day) event with multiple tracks (5 Session 2 Dev 2 ITpro 1 DBA), and a engaging the local community for presenters.

This approach accomplished some great things.

1) The fee that was required produced an audience that was focused and engaged, people wanted to be there, and it wasn’t just for the free lunch.

2) Focused the message on skills development with the latest tools rather than just what the next tools were.

3) Exposed attendees to local experts  throughout the different tracks.

4) brought an experience like TechEd to local cities and provided an opportunity for IT pros who don’t have the budget or the seniority to attend a conference like TechEd.

There were a lot of other great benefits, but one area that Microsoft wanted to focus on was consistency throughout the events and the country. Because of this the TechNet and MSDN teams spent an incredibly amount of time working with the local speakers to present the same session at each event. This of course leaves little leeway for a speaker to add their personal brand to a presentation. This also requires the speaker to be disciplined and to not go off the rails and present within a specific time frame. There were other constraints such as sessions being recorded, real time and content translation, keeping the conference on schedule etc.

DevTeach/SqlTeach: First the major differences this conference targets Developers, and senior database administrators. This does cover some ITpro surface areas, but there is definitely a heavy focus on development, frameworks, best practices, and new languages.

The Speakers are brought in from around the world. And they typically  aren’t first time presenters. Most are multiple book authors, and practitioners.  The conference size also keeps the sessions to a maximum of 30-40 people per session and as a result there is a level of audience engagement that you just can’t get anywhere else. There are some presenters who usually present the keynotes as conference such as PDC and have premier sessions at TechEd. They also speak around the world. All this to say that you get a chance to ask not just and expert at what they do, but someone who is inline with the long term destination of the technology they are speaking about.

Now let me be clear I’m not saying that DevTeach speakers are better than TechDays, in fact there are some people who spoke at bother conferences, (like me!) DevTeach is formatted so you can gain access to these speakers in a way that is very difficult at other conferences and as such the value to the attendee is increased. The speakers also have a lot more control of their sessions. Besides a time l limit they are able to let the audience drive presentation topics, and you will often see a presenter change the whole focus of their presentation on the fly.

The next major difference is that DevTeach costs more than TechDays. This comes down to a bunch of different factors that include sponsorships, event costs, and scale. I’ll be frank about this DevTeach’s staff is relatively small and they keep sponsorship managed to a point where it has little impact on the conference itself. The downside is that DevTeach needs to recoup costs via the attendee pricing. The up side  is a conference focused on the needs and wants of the attendee.

Finally the last difference, and this helps to justify the last point is who the audience for these conferences are:

It goes with out saying that if an ITpro were to ask me which conference they should attend if they had a choice of one I would have to say Techdays, there is so much more content available for them.

For Developers it’s a but more tricky. It depends on what your needs as a developer are and how deep you want to dive on a particular topic. If you are just getting into the development game, or if you have been a junior developer for a few years and are looking to get a handle of the new technology coming down the pipe, a conference like TechDays may be better suited to you. On the other hand if your an intermediate developer looking to master the next step in career, so learning about formal frameworks, new language paradigms and talk to the people leading the field then DevTeach is your conference. For Senior developers I would say the DevTeach is a no brainer,

Finally DBAs should be interested in both conference, however if your more focused on the deep internals of DB management and development DevTeach again offers a layer that is extremely compelling.

So to wrap this up, I think the important take way from this is that the price and the giveaways at conferences should not be the deciding factors in choosing a conference. You should be looking at what you will get out of attending conference with regards to the projects you have in the pipe, and the goals that you have in delivering projects. If you can align the information provided in the conference with getting things done at work that is a huge plus. On the other hand if you attend conferences so you can learn what’s new, it’s important to choose a conference that offers sessions that align with your career goals.

Please don’t hesitate to tell me I’m totally wrong and that I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s always fun :) This is a discussion I think is making it’s way through our collective consciousness and this  is essentially my brain dump on the matter.