Join me and many other developers at Droidcon London at the end of October.
"Why Droidcon London?," you ask? Great question, thanks for asking! The answer is simple. But because I wanted to write more than six sentences to justify taking up your time reading this, I'm going to take longer to explain.
For one thing, there will be developers. Everywhere. Hanging from the rooftop, dangling from the balcony, occupying every seat - nothing but developers, developers, developers. None of these business-blogger types, no management consultants (well, very few anyway) peddling their wares; just developers. So the people you talk to are exactly the people you want to connect with; other programmers learning the same stuff to solve the same problems that you have.
Also, there are always great technical talks. Developers aren't just in the seats and hanging from the fluorescents; they're up on stage talking about the stuff they know. In many conferences, the people on stage are the people that are carefully prepped to deliver on-message talks about products. But Droidcon is one of those awesome conferences that's all geek. The only difference between the presenters and the audience is that one of them has the mic (and the slides and demos ready to go). So there's great stuff to learn and great developers to learn from.
Finally, and I think this is the essence of the 'simple' answer that I wanted to give originally: it's the weather. It has been my experience that London has the most consistent weather of any place I've been. No matter when I arrive and how long I stay, the weather is always predictably gray, moist, cool, and somewhat dismal. Surely you get tired of the perfect weather where you are. I mean, how many sunny days in a row can you take before you just want to burst out in song? And who can get anything done in the office with happy people skipping around singing and smiling all the time? No, Droidcon London offers exactly the kind of weather that developers need to buckle down and Get Things Done, because, well, there aren't really any better options.
Droidcon London: It's not whether you will enjoy it, but rather weather you will enjoy.
