Has Anybody Gone to these Maya Events? good/bad?

NoSeRider

http://www.alias.com/eng/about/events/index.shtml?prod=Maya

It's free and you get free food.

What are your impressions by these self promoting events?

r13

they are a dog and pony show. they get up there and do some walk thrus of how some cool features work. they show you how nice xyz thing is. they answer questions and soemtimes give out some crap. its good for meeting a few folks out there, but at the end of the day, i was rarely walking away with much real value. its a long commerical, treat it as such.

Pseudo

r13 is pretty much spot on. The free food and alcohol is generally enough to entice me, and occasionally you get some nice special guests.

There was an Alias event a few months back and Naughty Dog and I think Blur sent some people to demo workflows and some custom tools, and I found all of it interesting.
Sure, its basically fluffing up how awesome Maya is, but the guest speakers can show some really cool stuff.

I definitly recommend hitting up the free ones, so long as you dont have to go out of your way to get there.