Yahoo's Hackday is much better, because it is all about Networking and fun. It's much more affordable for me too.

Thank you for sharing this story with me !

Nice contrasts... Yahoo Hack Day, still going on, really seems to be the happening spot right now.

Awesome comparison! The eBay event sounds like torture. I was at the Yahoo Hack Day last night and it was great fun.

Ha, ha - that ebay DevCon event certainly isn't my speed...I mean Davy Jones, really?!

Phil - I was at Hack Day with a bunch of my eBay co-workers -- sorry I didn't see you there, and sorry to hear that you had seem to have had such an awful time at eBay DevCon. Everyone that I talked to at this years eBay DevCon had a great time, and we a large number of repeat attendees. I didn't run into any "VAR managers" at DevCon, whatever those are, and I there were no talks that I remember about "minimizing eBay fees." There were over 40 technical sessions on eBay, PayPal, Skype, and Shopping.com, which were led both by eBay folks and by external developers. We also had an "unconference" day that was filled with user-led sessions. Sorry if none of those did it for you. Also - sorry that you missed the other research labs projects that were on display such as a new relevence-based search prototype, as well as all the innovation from third-parties that was shown to over 10,000 eBay community members on the show floor at eBay Live. Also, I guess you missed out on the musical entertainment and parties throughout the event, such as the pre-party at the House of Blues. Sure - we'd love to have had Beck, and he is welcome to come perform at our next DevCon. I'll ask Chad and Bradley at Yahoo if they can help hook us up.

Phil - we appreciate everyone's constructive feedback, and we were at Hack Day along with everyone else to hand out and see what worked and what didn't, so that we can help to create better and better events for our developers. Hope to see you at next year's DevCon in Boston, June '07.

I was the Mobile app demo eBay Research Labs person at eBay devcon, and a better summary would be something like: New web based and mobile relevant search alogorithm, preview of highly animated flash based eBay deal finder and shopping network applications. New XML API's to allow developers to build their own variations.

Hi, Alan.

First off, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. That's always appreciated, especially since I can be wrong.

I had a nice time at the eBay DevCon. It just fell well below my expectations. This post didn't say I disliked the DevCon, just thought it was so different from the Hack Day.

Maybe it was a cultural divide? Or that the event design felt so much like "relationship management" vs. relationships. Or maybe it was generational, full of geezers who made me feel young (and I'm in my 40's) who hadn't touched code in decades. Or the artificiality of Vegas. Or the dearth of hands-on facilities and activities.

I know the eBay DevCon had many returning attendees. If your business depends on eBay, either as a powerseller or an IT shop, you can't afford to stay away. That's why the owners and managers of eBay-affiliated ISVs and VARS attended. At the same time, the financial barriers to attendance are steep, keeping out people who'd attend if the event was free and the lodging was cheap. There's a great blog of three developers from Canada packing into a van and driving down for Hack Day, for example, who'd never done anything with Yahoo! APIs before. Your event design has barriers to folks like that.

There were no sessions on minimizing eBay fees, although I'm sure they would have been packed. It was just the talk of every table, every powerseller, each developer. These were people already invested in the system, or supporting those who are. So they were focused on incremental optimization vs. creating entirely new kinds of businesses and solutions, more interested in business models than breakthrough technologies or making new technologies.

"VAR" is short for value added reseller, sometimes called a systems integrator. Lots of your devcon attendees fall into this category, blending software services with gear or other services. Check out VARbusiness magazine for an example of a trade publication they might read.

Want to measure the difference between the events? Count the photos posted by attendees to flickr for each event. Or look at the number of sessions showing up on podcast and video sites. Or the Google juice of each event. And look at the audience in photos of the sessions; the HackDay crowds are mostly people with open laptops during the sessions, researching, surfing, blogging, chatting in backchannels.

And Yahoo's developers weren't cordoned off by PR people to prevent frank and open conversations. Yahoo trusts their staff to work without chaperones at these events, a distinct difference in approach. One has a culture of transparency and openness, and the other a culture of communication filtered by legal and marketing and publicity departments.

Looking for analogies, it's an approach to style and engagement that reminds me of the big movie studios vs. independent/underground films; of Clearchannel vs. satellite radio; of the big, rapacious record labels vs. early Napster; attendees vs. participants; of Monkees nostalgia vs. Beck.

Not saying I have it right. It's just my own experience.

It all depends on what you want. I've been to similiar "hackfests" in my time, and the output is what? A fun time, lots of interesting t-shirt logos and very little ROI. In other words, a great way to give your engineers a mini-break, but arguably little real business.

Can't comment on the ebay DevCon, but for me it's all about getting business done. Personally I hate the stereotype of developers being perpetual college dormers. Many developers out there are very business-savvy.

So the cosmetics (sleeping bags, 24 hour codeathons etc don't bother me. What really matters is 1. Do I get good info when I attend 2. Does it help me make money?

Anything else is side orders...

Irish