Yeah, I heard about it years before I finally lined up the time and money to do it, and I've been back every year since. It's neat because it's a technical conference that includes career-building, mentoring, more socially oriented sessions as well. But what really gets me, coming from academia, is the quality of the talks themselves -- no mumbling, no droning, no surplusses of bullet points. I see a lot of PhD students present stuff working at a university, and let me tell you the ladies I blogged about above were waaaaay above average in every aspect of their presentations. Plus, for me... I know lots of technical women, but you sometimes feel like maybe you know *all* of them in your field, I guess. I feel like I'm pretty well-established and well-supported and all, but going to GHC and seeing 3600 women, meeting new folk every year is still inspiring and awesome. Today, I sat down at the table that seemed to have the most grey hair at it and just listened to stories, and met 10 women who I would never ever have had the chance to talk with otherwise -- we were still talking away after all the tables had emptied out. It's definitely worth clearing your schedule to do it once. :)

BTW, my friend Valerie blogged a lot of the other security sessions (i.e. the ones I missed 'cause I was on other panels myself) and she's got some pretty extensive write-ups on her blog, if you want to hear about some of the other sessions:

http://bubbva.blogspot.com/