>PMFJI. Will you be taking in any VB courses in Orlando in May?

No. I've done several pre-conference courses before, and even though they make for a great overview of something new - IMHO that's only valuable if you got the time to take that overview home and continue on further with learning & conquering the subject matter (which for me would typically take at least another 2-3 weeks of playing with it). As an independent I usually dont have that kind of time available, so I see a great deal more value in a solid week of hard core hands on training where when I walk away I'm raring to go on that particular topic (an know a lot more than I would with a week of independent study). So I look at it as getting from point a to point b in the fastest way possible.

Note... we're talking development language training here, so just to give pre-confs fair credit, if we were talking a general technology area (like XML or IIS stuff for example) I'd definitely reach for the pre-conf course first.