I spent today in a movie theater where the Technical Seminar team put on 4 different seminars.  In the AM, there was a Connections event for the typical small business end user and a TechNet event.  In the PM, there was a TS2 event as well as a MSDN event. 

I spent most of the AM in the TechNet event.  However, I did peek in on the Connections event and caught about 5 minutes of a discussion/demo of OneNote.  In the few minutes that I spent in Connections, I got at least 2 tips on using OneNote that I was not aware of.  The audience was very engaged and asked good questions.  The TechNet event also had some tips on the Virtual Server and ISA products which should prove helpful.

For me, it was worth it.

In the PM, MSDN was focusing on .NET again.  There is plenty I do not know about .NET, but the general session stuff was not as “exciting” -maybe it was the “after lunch” factor.  I did enjoy the discussion of the Express betas currently available.  There seemed to be a definite buzz when this was discussed.  I also ducked into TS2 for a few minutes during a break.  I found out how well SBS 2003 was doing.  One of the demos also showed that some shortcomings still existed for this product - at least by the reaction of the audience.

Again, it was worth it.

In discussions with some other colleagues who do not go or have gone before but stopped, the general thought is “Last time I went, I didn't get anything out of it”.   I have had that experience before too, but I can still recall at least one session in the last year that gave me some really good info and made my life easier.  If you go 2 or 3 times and get very little out of it, you may not be looking beyond your current horizon or you know too much. ;-)