Microsoft’s PDC developer megaconference, certainly the largest developer conference for software engineers and architects I’ve ever seen, is being held this October in LA. This year will feature a conference within in a conference, an informal unsession.
An unsession, like an unconference, is planned by participants rather than an organizer and they’re popular with tech crowd. Having been involved in our local BarCamp, I can say that there are many benefits them– real thoughts/ideas/demos from genuine evangelists instead of thinly veiled infomercials, the opportunity to learn about something outside of your primary interests (you might be a java gal presented with your first opportunity to see ruby), and so on– and a group of people from Microsoft get this and are trying in earnest to bring this energy to the show.
Unfortunately they tried something similar at MIX08 that I completely missed (missed meaning overlooked– didn’t see it, didn’t notice it). Hopefully this unsession wont get lost in the sea of over 160 sponsored sessions scheduled.
