Given that TechEd is on right now, I was interested in whether it's a favourite among members, or if there was something more interesting that held their attention - be it another Microsoft-focused event such as the Sharepoint Conference, or something else, like linux.conf.au. Or perhaps something a little less strictly  tech-oriented but with plenty of geek, like Supanova (never been)?

No wrong answers, of course! It seems like every time I search for something, I stumble across another conference. Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences - are there many good free or inexpensive conferences? How about security focused events? Are events like TechEd that cost anywhere up to $2k to attend worth the money? Do high conference costs cause you to miss out regularly? Do you get value out of any conferences at all?

Outside of TechEd, there's not been that many conferences that I've been to. Perhaps I might find some from your suggestions!

I quite enjoyed Cisco Live!. It felt a lot more efficiently and professionally run than TechEd, and there was a massive diversity of content and speakers, even for a "Microsoft Guy" like me. That said, the community aspect of TechEd simply blows it out of the water.

I've done a lot of Cisco so that'd probably be interesting for me on a tech level.

Community is probably the big thing for me with TechEd. I get a lot out of it, but more so with our party. I guess the duration has a lot to do with it though - 1 or 2 day events have less opportunity for this kind of thing.

TechEd is my favorite event, only because I haven't been to anything else of such magnitute. I'm sure Cisco Live! would be awesome, but my interactions with Cisco have been rather limited (I do have my ICND1 cert!). I've been to a few other bits and pieces (such as the private HP cloud event I blogged about), but no other giant showcase like TechEd.

Being in Adelaide, I can really only justify an interstate trip for something really worthwhile... and not much event wise happens in Adelaide. Keen to hear of other events worth attending, and not just Microsoft stuff!

The events that really grab me are the general events like Tech in Government or Tech in education - they aren't a vendor run event and allow greater exposure to different disciplines like cyber security, technology, consolidation, open source implementation, etc.

I go every year that the tech in govt event is on - one of the things that AC Events are doing is setting up exhibition passes, free passes that allow you into exhibition alley, the section that is not the seminar, but gives you access to the vendors on display. This year I got to see the new Epson projectors, the surface projectors, the new scanners, the new printers. I also got to chat to palo alto and AAPT. These exhibitors don't come through canberra often, so any chance to learn about their technology is an absolute bonus.

AC Events run different events in each state, so there may be something that interests you there...