Last weekend I attended the Linux Piter conference for the second year in a row. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conference both for the caliber of speaker (Cristoph Hellwig and Lennart Poettering this year) but more for the caliber of the audience. I receive interesting technical questions, suggestions, and insights about my talks when I present there. I would liken it to a conference like linux.conf.au: a less corporate/more community focused audience which is highly technical.

Getting to Russia can be complicated for most, but speaking here is interesting in addition to the technical aspects: the program committee puts on a "cultural day" the day after the conference, showing visitors around Saint Petersburg, which is a much nicer speaker gift than a box of chocolates or another USB charger :)