Have you been to any small regional conferences?

I've gone to MountainWest RubyConf a couple of times, on my own dime, and gotten way more out of it than I paid for tickets, lodging and travel. I'm pretty shy but I push myself to talk to a handful of people every day. Just being around people who are really passionate about what they do, and good at it, is pretty valuable.

But I do live in the middle of nowhere with very few programmers. That might skew my perspective.