Were I sponsoring a technology conference, I’d much rather get my logo on a coffee mug than just about anything else from the conference.  Why do I say this?  Consider some other alternatives: a t-shirt, a thumb drive, a pen.  

No matter how slovenly a developer, he or she will only wear a t-shirt once every couple of weeks.  A pen sits on a developer’s desk unused most of the time.  Now other developers may use thumb drives much more than I do but I rarely find myself using a thumb drive.

The one thing I do as a developer is get myself coffee–every day.  Day in, day out.  T-shirts wear out, pens get used up, thumb drives get lost, but I still have coffee mugs I’ve had for literally ten years.  Of course coffee mugs get broken too but in the meantime I do believe developers will see your logo and get the brand awareness much more with a coffee cup than with any other swag you can brand for a conference.  Just sayin’.