Just a note that I've attended YAPC::EU (admittedly quite a while ago) and it was a great event. YAPC is a series of community-run conferences and quite chill and laid back (while still having lots of great information). The Perl community are, on the whole, friendly and welcoming people -- not quite up to Dreamwidth standards, but then not many are ;) Anyway, just wanted to put in my vote/encouragement for people to attend.