>I'm not trying undermine Advisor here by telling you not to go, but... if its hard to get money, do not go to this conference. Typically (and please feel free to correct me if this is wrong), the hotel, the food, the drinks, are all unnecessarily expensive. Perhaps your money would be better spent on a conference like GLGDW? Or possibly an international one.

You don't have to stay at the hotel where the conference is, people can stay anywhere they want. Much of the food is provided by the conference so it is free to attendees, and overall the value of the DevCon conferences are equivilant to the added registration costs. The conference last longer, many more sessions, detailed interaction with many members of the Microsoft Fox team, at least three times as many attendees to network wtih, etc.