I went to my first ever, honest-to-dog, software development conference: DevDays. I missed the boat for the London venue so settled on Cambridge instead; fortuitous, as it turned out that the London venue wasn't really kitted out for the vast numbers that gathered.
Joel Spolsky's aim was for attendees to be exposed to shiny new things that they would otherwise not have encountered and boy, I had never heard of half the stuff on show (go see the presentation list).
Joel's opening keynote, per photo above, was funny while making serious points - he's a great speaker as you might expect if you've followed him online. The slide shown above depicts his overarching piece of wisdom that people do stuff simply to get laid, so you should bear that in mind when developing software. No, really.
And then Joel Spolsky wrote the following on his weblog: "Who is this DevDays audience? They're the elite of the elite of the best programmers out there." It's nice to be recognised.