Ok, I’m getting a little sick of all the conferences popping up all over the west coast like zits on a pre-Proactiv using Jessica Simpsons’ face. There’s the standard fare of conferences for any and all computer languages, but now there are Web 2.0 conferences and Web 2.0 company site launches and blogging software conferences and…well theres just lots of conferences. The problem is that every single one is on the west coast with the exception of a few snooty conferences that hold court in Europe somewhere to make themselves feel extra elitist and special. If you are from California maybe you haven’t heard, but its true that we do have computer and (gasp!) the internet in the midwest and some of us are pretty damn smart. So why don’t we ever get a conference? Of course I understand that some of these “parties” are celebrating the launch of a new company, and that makes sense to have that party at or near the offices for said company. However the vast majority of these conferences are location independent. You don’t have to have your MySQL conference in San Francisco, MySQL can be discussed anywhere. Do you think that the Web 2.0 phenomenon has reached past the borders of California? You bet your sweet bippy it has! (Editor’s Note: Where did that come from?) We have computers and the internet out here too! Can’t we have some fun instead of being relegated to looking at flickr groups of convention pictures, reading blog posts Live from the floor! and getting handouts from Valleyschwag? I already know the answer: “No.” Most tech conferences will never leave the borders of California. We, the computer people of the midwest will get no such conference. We will not know the joys of having to wear a lanyard and bumping into a low-rated tech celebrity on the convention floor. Well will never know the joys of seeing Leo Laporte setting up an on-location TWiT at MacWorld or overhear Robert Scoble talk about the virtues of Blogging and Windows Vista at a podcast conference. It will never happen.

Maybe all is not lost. I am putting the call out for at least one tech convention to come to St. Louis! …but we all know whats going to come from that: Dick. So the real plan is to make our own conference. Today I’m floating the idea of the Midwest Tech Conference! This conference would happen in St. Louis, Missouri and would be a BYOBW conference, which of course means Bring Your Own Buzz Words. This conference can be about whatever you want. There won’t be a rigid “topic” like some of those other conferences…you want to talk about MySQL, go right ahead. Blogging? Sure why not! Who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman? Put me down for one of those seminars! No, we might not get Scoble or Laporte out to it, but at least we would have something going on thats not in California.

Yes, I’m serious. If you are interested in this please let me know! I would be happy to go all the way on this if we get a good response: t-shirts, sponsers…the whole deal. If we only get a few people then we can still get t-shirts and have a BBQ at my apartment in the city. Either way, its high time we have something like this and Hell Yeah Bitch! .com has both the balls and free time to get this thing going! Who’s with me?!

If you are even a little interested or if you are a lot interested and want to help: mike -at- hellyeahbitch.com (or at the very least, leave a comment.) Also, be sure to Digg this, or email this to any and all that would be interested.

By the way, if anyone wants to take a hack at making a better, cooler, and bigger logo (suitable for t-shirts and posters) please let me know and help out!