I attended a Day of Dot Net event in Lansing a few week back. If you're not familiar with them, they are free mini-conferences (one day) about, not surprisingly, .NET.
I had originally planned on driving out to it Saturday morning, but then Jenn pointed out I'd have to get up really early to get there around 8am. I already work in Farmington, which is 45 minutes to 1 hour from home (and 45 minutes to 1 hour closer to Lansing) and would end up being a really long day for me. So I ended up just staying at a hotel in Lansing Friday night. That turned out to be a great idea. Note to self: the Best Western in Lansing feels and smells like a 80's style bowling alley.
When I got to the hotel, I had some time to look up directions to the college where it was being held. It was only a few miles away, so I decided to not bother to drive over there on Friday night (which is what I would normally have done). In the morning I followed the directions Google Maps had given and found myself in a church parking lot (hmm..."Day of Dot Net and Evangelical Revival??"). I checked the map a few times and it looked OK, and I was exactly where it said I should be. I think that was about the point where I starting cursing out Google maps. I had left all my information about the conference in the trunk so I had to get out of the car to get at it. I happened to notice that the road I was on looked like it actually continued around the side of the church (imagine a light bulb going off above my head: "hey...maybe...."). I jumped back in the car and drove around the parking lot and sure enough, the trees suddenly cleared on my left hand side where the college was hiding. I noticed another car stop right about where I stopped, so it wasn't just me being dense (honest!). Note to organizers - great event, but a small sign would have been appreciated.
When I got into the building (which also wasn't marked, so I still wasn't entirely sure I was at the right entrance), I was surprised at how few people were there - that kind of surprised me since I wasn't able to make it to the last DoDN because it had filled up. It turns out that as the morning wore on the sessions really started to fill up.
The sessions were an hour long - which is REALLY short; they flew by. The sessions all seemed to run a few minutes long which pushed into the next session running a bit longer. The lunch break helped to reset everything.
A few notes to the various presenters:
- The bottom 1/3 of the screen really isn't visible if you're sitting in the back of the room. I was sitting in the second row and couldn't read some of it.
- White text on a black background might be easier on your eyes for development, but it's impossible to read when it's projected up on a screen. I'd suggest sticking with black text on a white background.
- Don't try to wing demo's. Only a few people can successfully pull that off - you're probably not one of them.
I actually ran into a few people I knew - one was someone from the local VFP user group, the other was a old-VFP developer that I haven't seen in a few years. That was a nice surprise. Overall, I was impressed by the number of people who attended, considering you're basically giving up a weekend day to attend. It's nice to see that some people actually care about getting better as developers (either that or they, like me, needed a few new shirts for their wardrobe).
One session happened to stand out in my mind - a session about Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control (specifically, the Windsor framework) by Jay Wren. Well organized, hit every question I had about DI/IoC. Honestly, I didn't "get" DI/IoC before this session; yeah, I understood what it was, but not really why on earth I might need a framework for it. It is actually an elegant way of solving a particular development problem, giving you the benefits of a factory pattern and the flexibility of DI, without getting in your way (at least that's what my notes say). I had the "a ha!" moment, then promptly lost it in one of the other sessions. I'm sure it will come to me at some point, although at this point I'm getting a bit nervous 
At the end of the conference, they ended up giving away of ton of stuff. Just not to me. Oh well, maybe next time.
Overall, I definitely attend another one - a big thanks to the organizers and presenters and sponsors, I know it's a lot of work to put something like this on - it was appreciated. Just try to make sure you've got some soft drinks (Coke, Mt. Dew, etc.) available in the morning next time around <g>. It's hard for some of us to get moving in the morning without some caffeine (for us non-coffee drinkers). Sure I feel all healthy from the orange juice I ended up drinking, but it didn't help much to put a spring in my step.
Links
http://www.dayofdotnet.org/Lansing/2008/
http://jrwren.wrenfam.com/blog/