Thanks for making mention of Simon's adventure. After reading day 1 of his OLAP Sprint, I mentioned to my boss how it would be nice to go to PASS with specific objectives in mind. I pointed him towards Simon's posts. He signed off on the idea and we should be going next year.

I like this targeted approach because it gives you a goal so you are actively listening during the presentations and not just grabbing swag and eating free food. Taking ideas back to the hotel after hours and testing them out makes a lot more sense than taking it all in and doing nothing with it with the hopes that it will come in handy later. It's pretty much like school, if you don't apply it quickly then it is in one ear out the other... I went to the Microsoft PDC back in 2003 and we did not have a plan on that trip. Instead we did a lot of wandering around, collecting free items and essentially mooching. We came back with a number of good demo discs and training books but no immediate use for any of it. Subsequently, most of what we were exposed to never made it to production.