As someone that puts on conferences (including this one), this is something I've spent unhealthy amounts of time thinking about and it's a question any sane per

As someone that puts on conferences (including this one), this is something I've spent unhealthy amounts of time thinking about and it's a question any sane person should ask. There are really two (well 3) things you should hope to get out of a conference. 1) Information. The most visible reason to go to a conference is to extract information from speakers in a direct form. Whether this actually "works" depends largely on whether you (the attendee) have the right prior knowledge and expectations and whether the speaker has the ability to teach you something. If either of those is wildly off, the session will be a miss. My goal as an organizer is to find great speakers and make expectations as clear as possible to both attendees and speakers so that this connection is maximized. That said, there are many books, videos, tutorials, blogs, etc on Clojure (or any other topic). Will you learn better from a teacher than a book? Maybe. Hard to say. Sometimes seeing a talk live forces a focus and clarity that you would not otherwise have. In short, I can't answer this for you. :) But I will work hard to create the environment for it. 2) Relationships. AKA the "hallway track". This is something that is much harder to get through online learning - meeting and creating relationships with the people creating and using the technology. For many people it is hard to quantify this value (unless you're trying to get a job or something very concrete). But I'd say this is every bit as important as #1. 3) Inspiration. This one is even more elusive, but a conference with the right speakers and audience can be electric and inspire you to learn and create. Clojure is a young and exciting community right now with a ton of crazy smart people. I find it quite energizing to be talking to people in the context of that. You may find that taking a training course (which we will be offering prior to the conference), gets the really hard focus on #1 which is what you want. However, that training will certainly be more than $450. :)