Emerging Technologies Conference, here I come…

I’ll be attending the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference in Santa Clara from May 13th through 16th. I’m flying on accumulated points and am attending the conference on a free pass, so I figure it won’t put too much of a beating on my pocketbook.

I’m certain that I could probably pick up most of what’s going on at the conference without having to attend it, but there is a reason people often follow up stories with the line “you had to be there”. In spite of the fairly tightly-knit clan that a lot of us P2P veterans have on the IRC channel #infoanarchy as well as through e-mail, there’s still nothing like meeting face-to-face, hanging out, exchanging ideas or even just talking guff. I’m looking forward to catching up with some folks I haven’t seen in a while — Cory, Grad, John, Jill, Bram, Bryce, Justin, Roger, Clay, Rael and the world’s coolest geek book publisher, Tim O’Reilly.

It’s a real pity I no longer have the budget of a Director of Developer Relations. I’d love to buy rounds of beer for all you guys again.

By the way, Tim, if you need a closing keynote accordion number (just like the P2P Conference in February 2001), I’ll do one…