I've been to I/O the last three years and I've found it to be worth the price of admission, even if you ignore the free stuff they've given out. The sessions ar

I've been to I/O the last three years and I've found it to be worth the price of admission, even if you ignore the free stuff they've given out. The sessions are streamed or filmed, but if this stuff is your bread and butter professionally it's well worth it to go in person and talk to fellow humans. The networking opportunities are great. I have sat down at lunch and realized the guy next to me was a developer of an open source package I was using in an Android app I've published. They usually have office hours sessions for the various developer platforms they have, where you can bring your questions to their dev-rel people and engineers. They've also been doing some code labs where you can try out some new part of a platform in a guided manner. There's another networking opportunity there, the way it's laid out means you get to exchange help and get to know the people sitting around you. Having gone last year I got in on the Glass preorder (which was exclusive to I/O attendees) and I'm looking forward to having an opportunity as a developer to get out ahead of this tech. And they generally have a pretty fun afterparty lined up, if you're into robots that fly, music, and games.