I will also be at CodeRage II

Like Marco Cantù I will also be at CodeRage II (in the week from November 26-30, 2007), although I won't be present "live" the whole week, since I'll also be doing two Delphi masterclasses for the UK Developers Group on Monday November 26th and Tuesday November 27th on Database and Web Development Essentials.

For me, attending conferences and events always involves speaking as well (I can only remember a handful events that I attended without doing at least one session myself). The reason is simple: I just love to do (training) sessions and explain concepts and issues to fellow developers. And I agree with Marco Cantù that although a "live" conference is best of all, a virtual conference is better than nothing.

However... a big thing that I miss in a virtual conference is the interaction with the audience. I like to make some little jokes, and also need to look at the people to know if they "get" the message I want to tell them. And I often also depend on them to ask questions for clarification or exploration of related issues. More often than not, I come away from one of my own sessions with new ideas or experiences based on feedback from the audience. It's a learning experience for me as well. And that's not possible with a virtual conference.
In fact, while recording the "Webcam Fun for Delphi Developers" session, I realised that part of the fun would have been the interaction with the audience (pointing the webcam to someone in the audience and demonstrating the "motion detection" algorithm - or taking snapshots and manipulating them).
Another disadvantage of pre-recording a session is that I record them in small cuts of 2-5 minutes each. Often, I'm not satisfied with the result and re-take the cut. This means that for a one hour session, I'm easily taking a day to record it (the webcam session started at noon and the final takes were done at night, when it was too dark to view the webcam garden results live - you have to see the session for the final results ;-))...
But on the positive side: at least you will know for sure that when you attend my session, everything will work. There will be no beamer problems, no laptop crashing, no unexpected compilation or run-time problems that may take a few minutes to clear up or explain. And still all code is written "live" in the recording, so the end result may be a flawless session for optimal learning experience. Just a bit less fun and interactive for everyone involved.

So if you want to attend the Webcam Fun with Delphi 2007 session "live", feel free to attend the Software Developer Event on December 14th in The Netherlands, where I'll do it with an interactive audience. Hope to see you there (Marco will be there, too!) or "see" you at CodeRage II (or at one or both of the two masterclasses in the UK earlier that week).