Another reason that I'm not missing JavaOne or WWDC terribly much is that I would really like to see more meetings that have the flavor of the DIY-IT events that Doc is thinking about. I go to conferences for the people and for the chance to do something in high bandwidth mode. For me absorbing information via presentations is low bandwidth mode. You usually can only learn enough to know that you need to go read a pile of specs or code, so it's not really that helpful. I can do that at home or online. The thing that is hard to do is real time full bandwidth discussions with other people.

One thing that surprised me was that Doc didn't think about the Sci-Fi con angle for his events. There's a reason that ApacheCon and PyCon are called ApacheCon and not ApacheOne or PyCon and not the World Wide Python Developer's conference. The names do say a lot. I guess Doc missed Ken Coar walking around in his Star Trek uniform.