For anyone considering attending Gamefest, do keep in mind that our conference is first and foremost for commercial game developers today. There's very little to no beginner content and only one track is on XNA Game Studio. All of the content will once again be made available after the event in both slides and audio recordings shortly after the conference.
For those looking for an update on where XNA Game Studio is headed next, the days in which Gamefest is held are typically good days to tune into your RSS news aggregator. We tend to make an announcement or two.
--dave