I went to a technical convention in San Diego last week. Even though I knew there wouldn't be many Black people there, after seeing myself as the only Black person in the rooms, I started doing the number count.
In all, there were about 10-12 of "us". Overall, the number of attendees of the convention was about 1300. The "head nod" acknowledgement then became the "thing to do" when we saw each other.
Another convention in the area, a banking convention, had a much larger number of Blacks attending. From listening to the side discussions, Check 21 seemed to be the big deal.
One of the issues being talked about amongst the attendees at the tech convention was the H1-B visa stuff. (Meanwhile, there were more "Indians" present than Asians).
There was also discussion of outsourcing. The main vendor addressed managers by saying their software enables outsourcing strategies. And there were outsourcing vendors manning booths.