So it looks like I'll be attending three trade shows in 2006. NAMM (National Association of Music Makers), Jan 19-22. This should be very exciting, as the general public is not admitted, and they usually have quite the array of famous musicians. WWDC (Apple's WorldWide Developer Conference), Jun 11-16. I'm just assuming I'll be going to most of this show, as it's great fun and not too far away from where I work/live. SIGGRAPH (ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics Conference), July 30 - Aug 3. Siggraph always has shiny stuff, and it's come to my attention that computer graphics is far more exciting than I originally anticipated.
I'd like to attend OOPSLA sometime, given the fact that there are some really good speakers there. Unfortunately I missed the Ralph Johnson year (he's apparently organizing OOPSLA this year), which would have made things more exciting – he's a pretty exciting lecturer; I took a class from him at UIUC. Although at that point, he had actually stopped giving a lot of the real lectures, and just played a video of him giving the lecture from some number of years past. That was a little annoying...
If anyone I know is attending any of these conferences, drop me line at robertchin at mac dot com, and we can meet up!