Please consider attending the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference.
http://glsec.org/Day 1 (optional), are tutorials and an excellent chance to get hands on time. The second day is just the conference full of talks with the following topics:
* Software Development
* General Management and Analysis
* Quality Assurance, Testing, Configuration Management
* Embedded Development in the morning
* Potpourri in the afternoon
A complete list of the talks for each is on the program page:
http://glsec.org/pages/Program_2008It's a great chance to do some business networking. This could be attracting new vendors, employers, employees, or just making meaningful connections. I'll be there and I'm actually giving one of the lightening talks.