Lotusphere
I think of Lotusphere as a holiday for Notes Developers. It has a festive, party atmosphere, and I noticed that I get less and less technical information out of them each year. It's a good chance to mingle with Lotus and Iris representatives as well as the odd IBM representative, if you can find one. It's also a chance to finally meet some of those names you see all the time on Notes.net and in DominoPower. The vast number of people that attend Lotusphere is really overwhelming to me. I've never heard so many different languages spoken at a single arena. The hype before a major release is, well, major, and of course, I dig Walt Disney World.

DevCon
DevCon, on the other hand, is more technical. There's less marketing talk and more technical, "How can I use this technology?" talk going on. That's what'll keep me coming back to a conference--if I can get more information out of it than I could if I just went online and investigated for myself. With fewer people at the conference, I found it was a lot easier to get to different developers and get my questions answered. I was able to spend more time in the Partner Showcase and actually enjoyed a few product demonstrations.

The quick answer is this: if it's about time for a major release, I'm going to Lotusphere. Otherwise, I'll be opting for Lotus DevCon because it's more technical, has fewer people, and gives away more freebies!

Chris Stoner, a.k.a. Green Jellybean, is an R4 and R5 Principal Certified Lotus Professional, currently working on a new project, http://www.macaytid.com. She can be reached at green_jellybean@bookideas.com.