Looks like Sahil put it out there.  He was one of the "some people" I mentioned that I was talking to about this at the MidAtlantic Code Camp  (So was Wally).  Like I said, I'm going on scholarship, so I'm just paying for travel, lodging and food.  So probably $1000 or so.  More to the point I'm not going to be billable for that week.  So will I recoup that money through better relationships I developed at TechEd?  Probably not, I'm a realist, some would even say I'm a pessimist.

CodeCamps are smaller scale versions of conferences.  They're free, they're local, so your only cost is a weekend.  Are you going to get a whole lot of business value from attending CodeCamp?  From presenting or running CodeCamp?  Again, probably not a whole lot.

Usergroups?  Why bother?  They're almost always inconvenient, you're giving up some evening after already having worked a 60 hour week, you won't get to see your baby girl, you spend a few hours getting a slide deck ready for what?  Hopefully one or two people will get something out of your presentation and go away enlightened.  Are you winning business, I doubt it. 

The people who make the decisions, for the most part, just aren't there.  We had a great presentation last night on Virtual Machines.  There were loads of good ideas that could save small to medium sized software shops boatloads of money in administration, maintenance and hardware costs.  You could streamline roll outs of new environments quickly, you could let developers install all their "junk" (IM, p2p, music, whatever) on a differencing disk to base line and maintain a clean development environment.  You could set up VSTS in virtual machines to see just what exactly the big deal is.

So am I going anywhere with this post?  Straight to hell.  No, seriously.  I'm with Sahil and most of the other folks I've talked to, if I was paying for this entirely out of pocket I probably wouldn't have attended.  I know I wouldn't have attended, because I didn't register and it was sold out when I won my scholarship.  SOLD OUT, so a lot of people think it's worth it.  Most people will probably pay for the conference twice, once for the conference, once for the time they're not billable.

So is it worth it?  Community?  Hell, yeah.  I presented at the MidAtlantic CodeCamp, stayed all day to help out, snap pictures and annoy people.  I "run" the WinProTeam Vienna and Rockville usergroups.  I try to get out to other usergroups in the area, though it's harder and harder to make time.  Conferences?  That's yet to be seen.  But I'll be at TechEd and I'll spend a boat load of time in the INETA booth.  So come by and see me, put my face to a name you've never heard of because you never read this blog.  Slip me your business card, and I'll slip you mine, hopefully we'll be the start of million dollar contract exchanges.