Time is ticking, so don't forget about the San Jose Rules Fest Oct 2010:
http://rulesfest.org/html/home.html

It's a 3 day event of talks followed by a one day Boot Camp with separate rooms for Jess, Drools&jBPM, Grind Works and Open Rules. You may attend the talks or the bootcamps or both:
http://rulesfest.org/html/registration.html

The BootCamp will spend the morning introducing the 4 technologies: expert, fusion, flow and guvnor. We will also cover what's new in Drools 5.1. The afternoon will be an open floor where you can get time with us core developers for any questions, mentoring or assistance that you would like.

Some Sample Talks:
http://rulesfest.org/html/abstracts.html
Artificial General Intelligence Engines, and Modes of Learning
Using Enterprise Architecture and Knowledge Engineering to Build Mobil’s Lube Knowledge Base and Knowledge Supply Chain
Building a Distributed Rules Engine: an Experience Report
Three Good Reasons to Adopt the W3C Rule Interchange Format (RIF)
Emergence of a Unified Event-Driven Business Process Management (edBPM) Platform
Software Practices and Experiences of Rules in CEP Applications

Mark