Thank you for the responses. I did not even consider YAPC. I wanted to attend one in the past, but I could never convince my managers to pony up ("You do IT Security, why do you want to go to a Perl conf/training" is what I have been told more then once). I finally have a manager who cares about their employees wishes/motivations, and see's the bigger picture.
Thanks,
Dru
Perl, the Leatherman of Programming languages. - qazwart