XFN Friendliness

"Now, if I can just add the 'met' value to some of those links… ;)"

You'll have to go to one of these developer events some time. If you can justify the cost. Well I guess it depends how far you have to fly, mostly.

Not particularly, the only public event I have been to is the computer arts expo. I just happened to be in London when it was on. Of course that is basically just a product showcase. As far as I'm concerned there has been nothing worth attending in Australia. I have limited interest in Flash so I didn't even consider attending the recent flash/macromedia event. I'm not going to travel to Sydney for a small event that would be mediocre at best.

Then there are workshops, from what I have seen offered you would want to really be sure you weren't wasting your time and money. Here is an example of one I saw recently, I considered offering my services as a speaker because obviously they have no idea what they are doing, joking. (google:"Melbourne Web Accessibility Workshops April 2004"). Also see nils dot org dot au. Of course it is just my opinion, judging from the impression I got from their sites, I may be wrong. The visionaustralia homesite could do with some work too.

I think with most web related workshops you could harvest at least twice as much information from the web in at most half the time. Even get a good book, the author of a good book probably knows more than a presenter at an average workshop. However I have seen some good looking workshops too! Of course it depends how you learn, some people have trouble with books. Getting fairly off topic so I better stop.