Event season is kicking off in a couple of weeks with Tech Days in Paris and Embedded World in Germany, other up-coming events include ESC West in San Jose, RTAS in Bellevue and of course the Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference (MEDC 2007) which hits 9 locations across May and June (dates and locations to be published soon).

Many events start with a keynote, this can be as short as 30 minutes through to a monster multi-hour general session. Keynotes generally follow the same format - the keynote typically starts with an exec providing background and vision information and then hands over to the demo monkeys to "wow" the audience with interesting/new technologies and (for developer events) "Live" coding.

How useful are the keynotes at the events that you attend? - is the format something that you're happy with (exec, demos/coding) ? - is there something missing from the keynote that you would like to see ? - are keynotes typically too long ? - do we even need a keynote or is this taking valuable time away from attending the technical sessions ?

Should keynotes be entertaining or just fact filled ? - Is it just me or are keynote demo people becoming too polished these days ? Perhaps too over-rehearsed, clones of a hidden speaker trainer, with no "human" showing through the demo ?

Do you think coding demos are useful for an event like MEDC or would you prefer to just see the technology working on stage to give you a feel for what can be achieved with the latest tools and technologies and then have downloadable videos that show a behind the scenes view of "how the keynote demo was built" that you could watch in your own time ?

- Mike