Brainshare is Novell's technical conference they hold each year in Salt Lake City, UT. Brainshare is for Novell's customers and each attendee pays around $1500 for the week to attend (which includes the conference and breakfast and lunch each day.) On top of the $1500, they also have to pay for their own airfare and hotel. There are hundreds of technical "sessions" they can attend to learn and sharpen their skills.
For the last 2 years I've co-taught with a friend at work about a product I support at Novell. This year, we submitted the same idea but it was rejected. I guess the same info 3 years in a row is boring. My co-worker, out of a joke, submitted a topic on "What's a good Password?" and it was accepted. So I helped with "teaching" this session. The session is set up more as a discussion instead of the normal lecutre. Because I am a speaker at Brainshare, I get a free ticket to the conference. My session will be taught twice within the whole week, which gives me the rest of the week to pretend like I am a customer and attend other technical sessions.
Brainshare reminds me how much I love my 15 minute commute to work each day. I would go crazy if I had an hour commute each way to work everyday.
I left at 6:30am this morning and headed for Salt Lake City. I left early to miss traffic as well as give me enough time to register (get my badge) and eat breakfast. After breakfast, I attended the keynote speaker and then attended a few technical sessions until lunch. I attended one session after lunch then decided to leave at 2:30pm and head back to Novell in Provo. I worked out for about 1.5 hours at the gym at Novell and was home by 5:30pm. I'm going to try and keep my training schedule intact this week as much as possible.
