I can sum up this year's key learnings in one simple nugget of wisdom:
Don't get sick.
Seriously, staggering around leaking brain lubricant and hacking up odd fluids is no way to experience San Francisco's premier game development event. If you're going to be all lame and contract a respiratory infection, do that shit at home, man... don't waste your time and cash flying all the way out to the west coast just so you can lay around and feel like death.
I'll be working hard on getting that lesson through my constricted brain cells in time for next year.
Also, when you book your flight home, make sure you leave on the right day. Nothing sucks like showing up at the airport and finding out you're 24 hours early... with no hotel to return to, nobody else left in town, and no idea what to do in an airport for an entire day.