Of course, if you don't already have your ticket, DrupalCon is closed to you (it's already sold out). But there are other events like the Zend PHP and O'Reilly MySQL conferences on their way!
Being an early adopter is a pain! I posted my first Drupal bug report at http://drupal.org/node/507668 -- because of a simple (perhaps inadvertent) change in the PHP.
Obviously, this article is just the first of many, as my presentation "Going Pro with Drupal" was only the start in learning the secrets behind the world's best CMS.