One reason I personally do not attempt to attend many local user group activities where I live is because
I feel like the caveman who has been stuck in his cave for thousands of years on a block of ice only to melt and
wake up to a world where everyone is light years ahead of me in technology.

I have to ask myself a few questions each time I feel this way:

1)  Are the really doing that right now?

2)  If not, why are they acting like experts when the do not have a live production
application to prove it.

3)  If they are doing that, where do they work? (I have worked in numerous so-called bleeding edge
companies over the last 10 years, and we were never as "current" as the user group presenters seem to
be).

Real world (in my little hemisphere), I have 2 main production applications that run a factory, one was just converted
to ASP.Net 2.0, the other is still ASP.Net 1.1.
I also have 1 new application that we started last year that is 2.0.
All 3 of these applications use SQL Server 2000.
My current company is not planning to upgrade to SQL Server 2005 anytime soon.
Wow... 5 year old technology... I guess I am a caveman.

Personally, from my experience, I feel that most companies are similar to mine.  We are in no hurry to upgrade
existing applications to ASP.Net 2.0 unless we get some "free" time, much less even ready to start thinking about
ASP.Net 3.0 ,WFP, LINQ, <insert new fangled technology acronym here> etc...
However, when I look at all the user group meetings and codecamp agendas, all the people talk only about the new
technology.  And, as I so rudely found out last year, no one is interested in finding out about existing technology.
I gave a chalk talk at my local codecamp and only had a few show up, then I was asked to give it again
at the Tulsa codecamp and ended up only having 1 person show up.

Needless to say, since I am so far behind, I don't believe I'll speak at the next codecamp, I wouldn't know
what to say.

What are others doing real world today in their jobs?