SELECT * FROM joel.friends WHERE interests = 'SQL' AND geek_factor >= 10;

I get real juiced up going to con­fer­ences and hackathons and such.  The energy of work­ing side-by-side with gifted indi­vid­u­als, and the accel­er­ated learn­ing that goes on swells up my brains and fuels my ambi­tion engine.  Plus camp is awesome!

In Novem­ber I’ll be get­ting my fill for FREE at Open­SQL Camp 2009 Here in Port­land, Ore­gon.  From their wiki:

this will be an un-conference style get together for peo­ple inter­ested in Open Source Data­bases. We are not focus­ing on any one project, and hope to see rep­re­sen­ta­tives from a vari­ety of open source data­base projects attend. Open­SQL Camp is free and its for­mat is designed to blend spon­tane­ity with the qual­ity and depth that comes only with pre-planning. We bor­row a lit­tle from many dif­fer­ent styles of con­fer­ences to achieve this. Our tar­get audi­ence are users and devel­op­ers, but oth­ers are encour­aged to attend too. There will be both pre­sen­ta­tions and hackathons, so there will be plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn, con­tribute, and collaborate!

Events/Portland2009/ — Open­SQL­Camp.