Is this something that a lot of companies do? I've recently noticed a few companies that have publicly written about having an internal developer conference (for example http://www.rackspace.com/blog/leveling-up-developers-at-rackspace/) and am wondering if this is a common occurrence. I know that there has been several times when I've attended conferences where I wished that a certain group of people could have seen a specific talk because they could have learned a lot. That group is also the least likely to want to attend conferences, so having something company wide would kind of force them into it. I can also see the benefit of forcing developers to share ideas between departments. So I think it is a really interesting idea.
I'm also not sure how you get enough people that are willing to speak. Many devs I know don't want to do public speaking or don't think they have anything to say. I also don't know how difficult it would be to get management buy in for such a thing.
Obviously this doesn't make as much sense for startups, but for larger companies it might. If you have any experience with such a thing I'd love to hear about it.
