So this year was the second year, now, that I’ve attended the St. Louis Day of .NET conference. Last year was fairly decent. There were a few good talks, but you can’t expect perfection from a small, regional conference that doesn’t have the draw or influence of something larger (like MIX or PDC). Fair enough. This year, however, will be the last time I attend this conference, and it all boils down to this:
SPAM Sucks
Apparently it’s my fault. Apparently I didn’t read some fine print somewhere that says that the STLDODN organizers were going to give my email address to every vendor that sponsored this event so they could flood my inbox with sales pitches and bullshit. Never mind the fact that this year’s conference was even more mediocre than last year’s. Never mind the fact that the keynote was on Visual Studio LightSwitch – a product that Microsoft is pushing on business users to somehow make my job obsolete. Never mind the fact that some of my co-workers are junior level and/or interns, and they couldn’t get into the jumpstart classes because they decided to put them in undersized rooms. Never mind the fact that advanced content is glaringly absent.
There is a lot wrong with this conference, but the biggest problem of all is that now my work email address is being spammed by the conference vendors and sponsors. What the hell? I thought you guys had more integrity. I thought—of all people—my fellow programmers would hate spam at least as much as I do. I guess I assumed too much. Goodbye St. Louis Day of .NET, and good riddance. I will not be back next year.
Hi! My name is Scott. Welcome to my place on the web. I currently work in St. Louis, Missouri as a Java EE developer. I also do a lot of work with ASP.NET and Node.js in my spare time.