The 2008 WebGUI Users Conference in my opinion was the best one we've ever done. We had 37 sessions and attendees from four continents. Things ran quite smoothly, and we had some very interesting topics.

That said, we've gotten lots of great feedback on how we could make the 2009 conference even better.

This year we had a new format. We did two days of three tracks (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). Almost everyone that replied in the survey liked the three way split, but they wished that the conference was longer. They missed the three day conference we've done in the past. In addition, for some reason many people either didn't know or didn't think about the workshops that we did before the conference, because about 20% of the surveys were wondering why we didn't cover topic X. But topic X was covered at the workshops, so we thought we shouldn't cover the same material twice.

In an effort to remedy those things we're going to make another change next year. We're getting rid of the workshops and merging them into the conference. We'll then have three days of three tracks each day. And instead of just having just lectures in the conference, we'll also do a lot of hands-on stuff right in the conference. That's going to be more than 50 hours of training available to attendees.

Unfortunately the cost of putting on the conference has gone up significantly over the past five years. We never make money on the conference, but this year even though we had a record attendance, we still lost a bunch of money on it due to increased prices of food, facilities, travel, swag, shipping, and more (and that doesn't include the human cost of writing speeches and organizing the event). So next year we're going to have to raise the rate of the conference by $100. The early bird price will be $600 and the standard rate will be $700. But the news isn't all bad. For your extra $100 you'll be getting an extra 20 hours of sessions to choose from. It seems like a fair trade to me.

Another big area for improvement is after hours events. It seems a number of you would like Plain Black to arrange after hours gatherings, like pub time, restaurant meet ups, etc. For the past few years we've told you what's going on after the WUC each night, but we haven't actually made arrangements for you to go do those things. Next year, we'll make reservations in advance for several after hours activities, so you'll know where everyone will be if you want to hang out, make some new friends/contacts, or just get some food with people you know from the conference.

A couple of you pointed out that some presenters had some problems with the quality of their presentations this year. The big example was that screen shots were often too small to read. While we have direct control over our own employees, we can't control the presentations that other people in the community give. However, next year we'll provide all presenters with a list of guidelines they should follow to make the experience better for you the audience. And we'll provide a review service for presenters that wish to get their presentations critiqued in advance by Plain Black.

Overall the biggest hiccup of the conference was the flakey wifi. It worked great for some, and not at all for others. One of the reasons that we use the hotel we use is that they have a pretty hefty (as far as hotels go) pipe (10 megabit full duplex) to the internet. And they have wifi repeaters on every floor in the hotel. Not to mention free wifi in all the guest rooms. We'll be working closely with the hotel over the coming year to make sure that the internet is up to our specifications. If they are unable to provide us with what we need, then we'll bring in our own internet pipe and wifi for the WUC.

The only other area of the survey that seemed to hit home with everyone was that half of you love the fact that the WUC is in Madison, and half of you want it somewhere else. Of those of you that want it somewhere else, nearly all of you want it at your home town (or close to it). The fact is that in order to do that we'd have to double the price of the tickets for the WUC, and then none of you would come. We'd have to fly to these cities to do a site visit, because we don't have people on the ground there. We'd have to fly all of our staff and equipment there (most of which live in and around Madison), which would cost more. And many cities around the country are more expensive than Madison is, especially the bigger ones. Madison is a central location, so people on the west coast, and east coast, and down south all have to travel about the same distance. And finally, if we moved it to *your* home town one year, and then somewhere else the next year, and so on, we'd still have just as many people wanting us to move it to their home town; so we therefore wouldn't really change anything from how it is now. 

Overall most of you also thought that this year's conference was the best you've attended. 94% of you gave a positive response that you would either definitely be back, or would probably be back in future years. I'd say that's a success no matter how you measure it.

If you're interested in taking a look, we've uploaded all the photos from the WUC to the gallery. If you have some photos you've taken, please feel free to add them to the gallery.

Also, if you have ideas on how we could make the WUC better, please feel free to reply here and let me know.