Into the early 1990s, SD caught the wave of interest in languages and tools for Windows program development. Compiler vendors such as Borland, Microsoft, Symantec, and Watcom competed not only over whose compiler produced the tightest code or had the most convenient IDE, but also who had the biggest floor exhibit and the hippest evening party. Vendors timed product announcements to coincide with the conference. Over the next several years, the spring conference moved to ever bigger venues, in Santa Clara, San Jose, and eventually back to San Francisco.

At those conferences in the mid-90s, I learned the handy Conference Session Tiebreaker Rule: "Favor the speaker over the topic." That is, if you're having trouble deciding which of several talks to attend, go with the one given by the best speaker. Even if you think you know the subject, a good speaker will either tell you something you didn't know or make you look at something you know a little differently, and entertain you while he or she is at it. At three different SDs, I listened to Jon Bentley (of Programming Pearls fame) speak on writing efficient programs. Each time, I got something useful from his presentation, in addition to the joy of hearing him speak.

I spoke at the Embedded Systems Conference for the first time in April, 1993 in Atlanta, and for the second in September in Santa Clara. Although I've missed a few of the ESCs in Europe and Asia, I haven't missed one in the U.S. since 1993.

Getting to both ESC and SD every year proved to be a challenge. In 1997, both conferences were scheduled during the same week, 3,000 miles away from each other. I was gratified to find that both conferences were so eager for me to attend, the ESC and SD staffs worked out a schedule that allowed me to deliver a full-day tutorial on Monday and three classes on Tuesday at ESC in San Jose. Then I took a redeye to Washington, DC and presented five classes on Wednesday (afternoon), Thursday, and Friday at SD. (I could still do stuff like that in my forties. Not anymore.)

I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to attend all those conferences and work with the good people (too numerous to name) at Miller-Freeman, later CMP Media, and finally United Business Media who helped make these conferences happen. My career--and my life--are better for it.

The good news is that the Embedded Systems Conference is planning to bring some of the content from Software Development over to ESC. I was the chair of SD's C++ track, and I will the chair of the newly formed C/C++ track at ESC. My job will be to broaden ESC's offering of C and C++ talks. I'll be looking at the best that SD had to offer, as well as new speakers and topics.

I'm glad the Embedded Systems Conference is still very much alive and kicking. Indeed, the Internet provides learning opportunities that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. But there's still no substitute for the professional outreach, personal connections and invaluable--sometimes unexpected--experiences you get at a good technical conference.

Dan Saks is president of Saks & Associates, a C/C++ training and consulting company. For more information about Dan Saks, visit his website at www.dansaks.com. Dan also welcomes your feedback: e-mail him at dan@dansaks.com. For more information about Dan click here .