Well the results of my poll (which can be reached from my Blog) seem very interesting. I'll share one result with you right now: The question is: 1. Which of the following (if any) Oracle DBA conferences do you feel you get the most benefit out of? The front running answer, which surprised me a bit, is: User conferences? Who has the money? Out in front at 24% of the respondents!! So, we user conferences really overly priced? If so, what do we do about that? Cheers!! Robert G. Freeman Author: Oracle Database 11g New Features (Oracle Press) Portable DBA: Oracle (Oracle Press) Oracle Database 10g New Features (Oracle Press) Oracle9i RMAN Backup and Recovery (Oracle Press) Oracle9i New Feature Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com (Oracle Press) -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l