On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 14:20 -0600, tim_webb@agilent.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am thinking of going to the Masters 2005 Conference this summer..
> 
> Does anyone have any idea if it is really worth it?

Well that depends on you. I was there last year and was pleasantly
surprised by how good it was.

> Are these Conferences well organized and will I really get anything out of the courses?

Probably the best organized I've ever been too. While you will get a few
classes and situations that aren't 100%, on the whole it's very well put
together and run

> My boss is a little resistant to pay for what he believes is only going to be a sales presentation and I can understand his point of view.

Well, he has no reason to trust my word, but I can tell you that very
few of the courses I attended had any sort of sales slant on them. There
was one that was pushing a 3rd party TCP/IP core a little more then I
liked, but aside from that almost all the content of each course was
very technical.

> I hope to gain more hands on knowledge with their products so that I can implement it into future projects and products.

Then I highly recommend masters, because if you're careful with the
courses you choose all you'll do is hands on stuff! :)

> It appears that if you just add up the cost of lodging and food alone the conference itself is not too bad, almost free anyway.  I could just as easily plan a vacation to the Grand Canyon and get a conference too if I had to pay for this conference out of pocket.

Did the grand canyon trip last year, well worth it, both for the
destination, and for what's more important to me, the journey. Ended up
hitting a few thunderstorms and some hail just north of Flagstaff, so
much hail that I had to switch to "winter driving mode" (the road was
covered in hail at one point, 15mph with the four ways on...), not good
when you're running summer tires...

> I have some working knowledge of PIC's and have used them in some product designs.  I would still consider myself far from being an expert on these products especially with the newest series of products with the last year or so.

That's one area I wasn't sure of. While I had a good amount of
experience with some of the lower end PICs, I was concerned that the
courses would be "over me" in required experience level.

I'm happy to report that didn't happen, in fact some courses were a
little TOO basic for me!

Masters IS a great way to get quick hands on exposure to the newer
stuff. Before masters I never even considered getting into the dsPIC
line, after masters my next project used a dsPIC!

TTYL


-----------------------------
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