Should I go to Startup School?
iamelgringo: I can't tell you whether you should go or not, but I can say what I got out of the last startup school.I met a number of great people at the last startup school, several of whom I interact with regularly one and a half years later.  One person I met almost became my cofounder this fall, and still might later on.I got to meet a number of users from Hacker News, and put names to faces.  That was awesome.I got to meet PG, and I talked with Trevor for a while about his robot.  That was very cool.I started the Hackers and Founders meetup ( www.hackersandfounders.com ) at last years startup school for people like yourself to get together and hang out and talk before the conference. Since then, it's taken on a life of it's own, and it's grown to a membership of 400+ people, and we routinely have 20-25 people getting together at a bar to talk our startups and shiny new technologies every other week.  It's a good time, and there's some good connections to be made.Would I do it again even if I had to pay $2k for airfare, room and board?  Yes.  but, YMMV.  A large part of the benefit that I derived from starting hackers and founders is because I had recently relocated to Silicon Valley.  It may not be as beneficial for you.