I am still considering. It seems affordable, but I am not sure what exactly I'd will be doing there. ;)
It might be exciting to see a few people from the Bitcoin space live, and I think it would be nice to meet a few of them/you. I guess, I'll sleep yet another night on it. ;)
Update: I just registered for the conference, will make travel arrangements tomorrow or so. I will see you there, I guess. :D
Thursday evening at Conference update:
Arrived in Amsterdam at 3pm. I am finally convinced that this is not only on my computer. :D
Today I met some people from bitcoin space: Met Jeff Garzik and Pieter Wuille, talked to David Schwartz, Ron Gross, and Alakani Itireleng, had a beer with Stephen Gornick, I saw Brian Armstrong, Gavin Andresen, Erik Voorhees, Tony Gallippi, and Meni Rosenfeld. I visited a bunch of booths and talked to people from Ripple, NXT, iceVault, GoCoin, BitPay,... ;)
I am excited for tomorrow, hope the presentations will be interesting.
After Conference update (@fredsbend)
There were four different tracks, which (with exceptions) were running in parallel at all times. The recording looked very professional and as far as I've understood all sessions will be made available online. There were about 1200 participants at the conference from some 50 countries. There were maybe forty or fifty booths: Payment-Processors, Exchanges, Mining Equipment Manufacturers, ATM Manufacturers, Ripple Labs, Altcoin-Projects, Bitcoin Merchandise, ...
I met quite a few members of the Bitcoin.SE community and also was able to point out some use-cases where Bitcoin.SE offered advantages over forum-based communication a few times. Altogether, I think I talked to maybe 100 people. I took a lot of inspiration and food for brain out of the conference.
Some of my favorite sessions were:
- The interview with Alakani Itireleng
- The Panel on the Economic behind Bitcoin (not much new to me, but interesting to hear some economists pick it apart)
Other impressions:
- Terrible male/female ratio ;)
- The entrepreneurial spirit was tangible in the air
- On the other hand, the community is still so small that everyone is able to talk to all the "big-shots": For example I've talked to Gavin Andresen, Mark Woods, David Schwartz, Jodie Brady, Peter Vessenes, Ron Gross. I met Roger Ver, Brian Armstrong, Jon Matonis, Jeff Garzik, Pieter Wuille, Meni Rosenfeld
- The whole thing is growing rapidly, I was offered several jobs and approached about being funded a few times (unfortunately I didn't have a project). ;)
- Amsterdam has a very interesting atmosphere, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring it
- It was terrible not to have a business card!
Two new Bitcoin Foundation Affiliates were announced during the conference: Germany and (I think) Mexico. We had a meeting of the Bitcoin Foundation (which I joined at the conference) after the conference ended on Saturday. My impression was that quite a few grievances were addressed and I got the feeling that the parties concerned understood that everyone is trying to do the best they can, but that the whole space is changing and growing very rapidly.
The Bitcoin Foundation announced that they would be working on separating their local efforts in the US from the international efforts, and that they would soon be opening an office in London for the international portion of the Bitcoin Foundation.
Gotta run, have a lecture now. ;)