I'm not going to the WE05, I just have too many things in the fire right now. However, I would highly recommend everyone try to attend these conferences. Even if you have to pay for it out of your own pocket, go.
You will meet new people, learn new techniques, network, eat convention food, network, meet new people, and most importantly get inspired to do new things. I've attended a ton of conferences from @media to the School for Scanning to Museums on the Web to the most recent: Business Blog Summit. I have always learned new things. I've traveled to London, Vancouver, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and more. I've sat in conference rooms inside convention centers, hotels, and the Getty. Every convention has been worth it, even if I can only manage getting into the trade show. Recently, I went to the business blog summit in San Francisco to learn more about RSS. During the first seminar, I met a guy from Toshiba who invited me to a mailing list about business to business blogs. Sounds innocent enough you may say. After posting a few comments on the blog I get an invitation to submit a resume to (I don't want to dooce anything, so lets just say it's one of the top 5 internet companies worldwide). A few weeks later ... I'm in Silicon Valley interviewing with this company! Yes folks, go to these conferences, meet people, interact, engage in conversations, grab cool t-shirts and make new friends. Before you know it, I may be the one inviting you to join this company. (Yes, I was hired and start in two weeks :) ) By the way, this list has been great. Much kudos to Patrick and Thierry for helping me with javascript programming. Ted www.tdrake.net ** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
