My day job revolved around network management (HP OpenView NNM) so I've been to plenty of HP love fests over the years. %-) PICs are a hobby for me and my wonderful wife (and household CFO) attended the 2002 Masters with me and encouraged me to attend the 2003 event by myself. Both rank up there with best vacations I've ever had. Went to the Atmel event here in Minneapolis and it was well done as well. (of course they didn't feed us like the food at the Masters) -----Original Message----- From: William Chops Westfield Sent: Sep 20, 2004 8:55 PM To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Subject: Re: [PIC]: dsPIC support on DIY programmers? On Sep 20, 2004, at 6:16 PM, steve@tla.co.nz wrote: > >> I will admit that if my company hadn't paid for me to go I likely >> would have never gone. > > How does Masters compare to any other related event like Embedded > Systems Conference, for example ? > I usually do the "free exhibits only" thing for ESC, EIC, WESCON, and so on, whenever they're local and won't cost me more than a local train ticket and and overpriced lunch, but I don't think I'd trust their technical content to be anything more than thinly disguised advertising for one company or another, probably not worth the price. (OTOH, sometimes the info you get on the exhibit floor is worth far more than nothing.) A single vendor event is entirely different. By definition, they must be 'worth the money' or people won't go, or get sent. I'll happily pay a low-cost emulator price for a seminar that includes that emulator; I've had pretty good luck with those. "free" seminars can run from not worth the price even with a free lunch to pretty useful, but they ARE advertisements (Atmel's annual marketing thing has been pretty good...) If I actually programmed PICs for a living, instead of just as a hobby, I wouldn't hesitate to go to Masters, or at least lobby to be sent to masters, based both on comments here and on what shows up on the net in the form of "published handouts." (however, one thing I noticed back when I attended DECUS symposia is that the value goes down over the years; many of the seminars are repeats or near-repeats, and many more are stuff that you'll hear through other channels once you're "plugged in", so the value can deteriorate to the point where it's mostly a social networking sort of thing (but don't discount the value of THAT, either.) BillW _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist