Drupalcon is now open for sessions proposals

I've seen a lot of people balking at the cost of the conference at $195. And yes, it's true this is up quite a bit from Drupalcon Barcelona. Unfortunately, Boston is expensive. :\

However, consider also how valuable you feel your own time is. How long have you spent bashing your head against some thorny API, or struggled to figure out how some module worked, or just plain not had time to keep up on all the stuff that's happening, and have seen major things change out from under you, how long have you been waiting to launch that Drupal freelancer career you've had in the back of your mind as you slave away writing Java accounting packages? ;)

If you've never been, you should know that a Drupalcon gives you a lot of stuff for that admission fee:

• It's an enormous networking opportunity. There are people there from all sorts of industries, non-profits, interest groups, and so on. And once you meet people "face to face" subsequent interactions are /much/ easier. A lot of folks have launched their careers based directly on meeting others at Drupalcons.
• You get training about Drupal and modules straight from the mouths of the people who built them. You can ask your questions to them directly (and if they're interesting questions, you might get a group of us puzzling over it and writing patches ;)). You can take these same people out for a beer to say "thanks" for all the code that you've used to build your own websites.
• There are sessions that dissect a large-scale Drupal site down to its base components and show you the guts of how everything works. You can ask questions directly to the team who built it, and inquire how they did the $foo feature, which just happens to be the very same feature you need on your site.
• You get to see community process in action, and better understand how Drupal works. You'll see working groups huddled off in a corner discussing how to solve a thorny, gnarly problem, and you'll see an entire room full of people heads-down and smacking down bugs. It's exhilarating to see so much energy and passion in one place, and it's the perfect opportunity to get involved yourself.
• And a million other things I'm not thinking of right now :P

Incidentally, anyone out there who has the resources, please feel free to submit a Drupalcon proposal for 2008 Europe or 2009 North America.

Hi,
I'd love to sign up for DrupalCon, but seem to be having some issues with the login.
I'm familiar with setting up Drupal sites, but could still be bozoing something stupid.
I requested new password, but none has been sent. The system recognizes my email OK: joe@greenmountainlinux.com, but isn't sending out a new password.
Is this just my issue or are others seeing this too?
Thanx.
--
Joe Golden
GreenMountainLinux.Com : People, Ideas, Connections