<p>I haven't been to enough of these "live" events to really determine which, if any, are worth the time / money.  Which ones do you attend and why?</p>

[{'answer_id': 26521, 'author': 'sparkes', 'author_id': 269, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/269', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I used to belong to my local Linux User Group which I co-founded but I treated it more as a social event than anything else but obviously a social event full of geeks is still a great way to get a great debate going :)</p>\n\n<p>Conventions and the like I've not got much out of other than being pestered by businesses who can offer me nothing that is apart from a bunch of Linux and Hacker ones where I've met loads of people who I consider friends offline, again great for the social aspect but pretty worthless to me in other respects.</p>\n\n<p>That's not to say I never got any business out of attending various events it's just that treating them as social occasions meant any business that did come my way was a bonus so I never left an event feeling like it was a waste of time.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 26568, 'author': 'Chris', 'author_id': 2134, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2134', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>For conventions, if you\'re still in university, and can make it to Montreal, Canada, the <a href="http://www.cusec.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference</a> (CUSEC) has been extremely enjoyable.  See the <a href="http://2009.cusec.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2009</a> site for the next event, and for a take on what previous years have been like, take a look at the <a href="http://2008.cusec.net/en/speakers.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2008 speakers</a> (note: it included <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/1/jeff-atwood">Jeff Atwood</a>).</p>\n\n<p>I attend CUSEC primarily because our software engineering society on campus makes a point of organizing a trip to it, but also because of the speakers that present there, and the career fair.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/26509', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1574/']