As we reflected upon WUC 2007, my staff and I all noted that this WUC seemed to go better than any WUC in history. Then we read the surveys. It seems those of you who attended agree with us.

For starters the vast majority of you love Madison compared to the Las Vegas and Chicago locations we have used in the past. That was shocking to us. We expected Vegas to be a big draw for people. There were a few of you begging to bring the WUC to your home town, and a few stating that we should find a new city every year, but most of you thought Madison had the right combination of atmosphere, entertainment, and food.

Going forward, if we move the WUC to a new city every year we'd have to raise the price considerably. Vegas works because it's cheap. Madison works because of reduced travel costs for us. But other cities have neither advantage. That combined with the comments we received about you loving Madison are enough to make us want to do it in Madison again next year. After that, we'll evaluate again and see where we stand.

Through the survey's we also learned that the vast majority of you liked the idea of a couple of days of workshops before the WUC. Even some of you who didn't attend them say you wish you did. So for now it looks like those are something we should plan to keep.

Another thing we weren't expecting was a combination of answers about the format of the WUC. There were quite a few people who believe the WUC should be only 2 days instead of 3, because there's just too much information to take in. In addition, many of you said that instead of 2 tracks we should have 3: novice, intermediate, and advanced. The novice track would be for people with no prerequisite knowledge and would include topics like advertising, writing, and the use of WebGUI's publishing functions. The intermediate track would include topics that cover templating, and advanced assets like SQL Reports and SQL Forms. The advanced track would include topics related to system administration and programming. With this information we're again going to take your advice and change next year's format to be two days long with three simultaneous tracks. It's the same expense and effort for us so no harm there. And the same amount of content for you. In addition, you can pick the content that's best suited to your level of expertise, and you'll have more variety per hour of topics to choose from.

As far as content goes for the most part you were pretty happy with the mix that was provided. Some of you were requesting topics that we've covered in years past. Some of you had some good ideas for future topics. Next year we'll do our best to provide a good mix again, and include the topics you requested.

Only one person had something negative to say about the food that was served, everyone else loved it. Same goes for the conference facilities. Though we had a full 6 megabit full duplex pipe for the conference this year (which is the best we've ever had), it was still a bit slow at times, so we'll try to get more bandwidth next year. Quite a few of you requested that we serve breakfast in addition to lunch, and tea in addition to coffee. We'll do our best to accommodate those wishes, but there are no guarantees.

Which brings me to the final point that was brought up in a few of the surveys. Several of you made comments that the WUC is overpriced, or that for the price we should include 3 meals per day, or better schwag. One person said we should use shabbier conference facilities to reduce the price, and one other person said we should serve cheaper meals so we could reduce the price. I have many responses to these statements:

• First, I want you to know that I understand where this comes from. There's a Scrooge McDuck in all of us that wants the world for a penny, or that will sacrifice quality for quantity. 
• Second, you need to understand that Plain Black does not put on the WUC for money. In the four years we've been doing it, our total profit is right around $100. And that's not counting all the time we put in to writing speeches, researching locations, and working with vendors. We put on the WUC each year to build camaraderie in the community, to provide a relatively inexpensive training option for the masses, and for fun. 
• Third, I don't know if you've ever attended any other technology conference, but most are far more expensive, provide worse schwag, and provide no meals. For example, I went to ApacheCon a few years ago. It cost me $1,800 for three days, I got a lousy grey t-shirt that looks like something you would wear to gym class in the fifth grade, and there was only a light "get to know you" snack the first night we were there. No actual meals were provided. By contrast we provide a high quality lunch, Starbucks coffee every morning, a well designed t-shirt, a gooey doll, pens, and webgui stickers as schwag, and we only charge $500 for the 3 days.
• Fourth, if we could find a way to reduce the price, and still put on a quality event, and still break even on the conference, we would absolutely do it.