> The quality of the speakers is mostly terrible. They choose a grand sounding topic then the talk turns out to be incredibly shallow and pointless. Yea, I'd l

> The quality of the speakers is mostly terrible. They choose a grand sounding topic then the talk turns out to be incredibly shallow and pointless. Yea, I'd like to speak at a conference some day, maybe when I'm more experienced and feel like I have something worthy to contribute. That's not looking likely - I'm turning 40 soon and still don't feel like I've mastered any aspect of computer science and/or developed any new insight into software development to the degree I could get up at a large conference and act like an authority on anything. And then I go to conferences where I'm forced to sit through presentations that the speaker obviously threw together on the plane (while half-drunk) the day before. Terrible and shallow and pointless, indeed.