sOT: DrupalCon - worthwhile for a complete n00b?

for any Drupal users/gurus,

is DrupalCon worthwhile for someone that's interested in learning
Drupal, but has no experience doing 'anything' with it yet?  or would
i be better off just going through some tutorials online and playing
around and then possibly looking at DrupalCon next year?

i'm volunteering with a non-profit group
(http://www.illinoissolar.org/) that will be migrating their website
over to Drupal in the near future, but they really don't have any
technical people on staff (actually, they only have a staff of
one...).  with the current State/Federal budget situation, funds to
non-profits have dried up quite a bit.  grants have also become
extremely difficult for non-profits to actually get as most grants
won't fund people, only stuff.  they (being the grantors) don't want
to pay people to do anything, they want to buy you 'something'.  so
their (illinoissolar.org) funds are quite tight and they're trying to
do most stuff with volunteer resources.

thanks for any help.
-- 
Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion 
http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni