I was just kicking back this Memorial Day weekend going through my bookmarks and I ran across a site I found a while back that I really enjoy called TechNetCast (from the guys at Dr. Dobb's). I would recommend checking it out, but the high-level description of what they do is put up audio and video of technical talks, from idea guys who just talk about abstract notions to the developers of some of the most popular programming languages out there and where they see things are going.
    Now, a month or so ago I was at NAB (a tradeshow for people in the video production industry) primarily to see what's new in that industry and to sit in some of the talks. Quick disclaimer here, I only attended a couple of the talks, so I can't speak for them all, but every single one I went to was absolutely horrible - more of a sales pitch for the people/company that was giving the talk and less about the topic of the talk. Of course, there are some conferences that really do a good job at talks ( CGDC being an example of one I really have enjoyed attending in the past), but on the whole many of the conferences these days are pretty lame which brings me to the point of this ramble - are conferences going to be a thing of the past?
    Now what I mean by this that I've had a more enjoyable virtual conference this weekend by just picking and choosing the broadcasts on TechNetCast that looked appealing to me. For example, I listened to Steve McConnell talk about software development, a roundtable discussion on the future of software development, a keynote by Danny Hillis on game development, and finally Donald Knuth talking about God and Computers - all in the comfort of my own home (which is much more comfortable than any conference room that I've been in). If I wanted to get a drink, I just hit pause, ran downstairs and grabbed a drink, then returned to the computer and pressed play. Now apart from roaming around of the tradeshow floor and stopping by booths attempting to get a free pen or some other worthless trinket, there isn't much of a reason to go...