I just heard about the new changes to BorCon. Some background: To my best guess, I've been a speaker at 6 or 7 BorCons. There were also 2 that I was asked to speak at that I had to turn down. I've also attended 2 or 3 more BorCons as an attendee, so I've been around the proverbial BorCon block.

The new BorCon format has a good side: it appears that Borland is getting back to their roots in making this more of a developer-centric event.

On the bad side, speakers will no longer be given their extremely modest stipend, but more importantly, Borland will not cover travel or hotel expenses for their speakers.

My take on this is that this move will kill BorCon. It looks like others are in violent agreement with me on the ramifications of this move. I'm sorry to see this happen, as I absolutely love BorCon. I sent a polite response to the Call For Papers explaining that I will not be speaking this year, nor will we be sending 2 other attendees to the event. My fear is that this will be nothing more than a glorified user group meeting. Don't get me wrong - user group meetings are valuable, but they are not BorCon. There is no accountability to keep speakers in line (what if they miss a deadline? what if they just don't bother to show up without telling anyone?). Dr. Bob - a long-time fixture at BorCon - also appears to be taking a pass on BorCon this year.

As the infomercial says, "Stop the insanity!!"... :-(