During my involvement in NNUG I've been playing with the thought of having a developer conference in Bergen. Funny enough I first started to consider this when we had some problems getting people to come to our NNUG events. I couldn't figure out why Bergen had such a low participation when other (smaller) cities in Norway managed quite good. I've also got reports from Microsoft saying that MSDN Live didn't do to well in Bergen either. Is this just how it is in Bergen? We just don't want to get our hands on new knowledge? Or is there so much info on the web that we don't see the need for meeting up in person? Maybe Bergen is just the worst city in Norway to be a developer? We just go to work to get our paycheck and don't really want to be bothered with updating our knowledge unless forced to? I don't think so and sure don't hope so! My impression is that the Java community in Bergen does not have the same challenges.

We will of course always have Mort though (see Jeff's articles here and here). Maybe Bergen is just overloaded with Morts? ;) However, I think a dev conference in Bergen has something to offer him as well.

So why do I want a dev conference in a city where developers don't participate in their local .Net community? First of all it's because I don't think the above is true. I think there is a lot of great developers and companies in Bergen working with development that would both see the benefit and be proud to host a dev conf in their city. Second, I think NNUG will benefit greatly from this and raise the visibility around the .Net community in the city. Thirdly, I have too much free time on my hand so I'm looking for something to do in my spare time (kidding).

So what do you think my dear reader? Is there room for a dev conference in Bergen? Would you come? And even better, would you volunteer to make this a reality? I'm volunteering now, but I need some helpers... :)

You might state that we already have a developer conference in Bergen and you would be right. It's called Roots, but I'm thinking about a different kind of conference. Roots is an international niche conference around OO (Recent Object Oriented Trends), but I want a general Norwegian (Nordic) dev conf. Even though I'm a .Net guy and would like .Net tracks, I also think there is room for Java and agile tracks.

And to all of you who have been going to NNUG regularly I apologize. The criticism in this post is to everyone except you ;)