I have come to a clear conclusion.  I am increasingly envious of my friends and their abilities, and each day realize just how much more I have to learn.  Its exciting to know that I’m lacking in so many ways in regards to technology, and software design in general.  It means I have a lot of growing ahead of me and a lot of exciting things to look forward to (IronRuby is now one of them).

I’m going to feed some ego’s now.  I’m going to tell you the people that I would pay a lot of money for (I’m broke, btw) and take PTO if I could just sit and pair with them for a day.  I can’t pick just one, so I’m going to pick a weeks worth of people.  This is non-MSFT btw.  Naturally I would spend time with Anders, Krzysztof and Brad A and a slew of others if I could, but I’m not near as interested in learning more about MSFT focused goals as I am about great software design in general.

Jean Paul Boodhoo.  This guy is creepy smart and conveys his thoughts very well.  Not only do I have a lot to learn about how to design better software from him, I’m sure there are things I need to learn from him on how to teach an unfamiliar audience, which he does on a routine basis.

Scott Bellware.  Until I met Scott, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Scott.  Now I realize Scott is a shorter version of me, right down to the attitude and haircut.  Scott is more outspoken though, for sure.  Scott and I share the same passions for things done right and our commitments to our respective communities and spreading the knowledge is hard to rival (David Walker certainly takes the cake when it comes to community contribution and commitment).  Scott has had the privilege of working in my type of environment for quite awhile, and has much more experience in my own realm than I do.  I certainly have things to learn from Scott.

Jeremy Miller.  Um, have you read any of his posts?  Do I really need to elaborate on this guy?  I think everybody has something to learn from Jeremy.

K. Scott Allen.  I really like K. Scott.  Its a great guy, easy to hang out with and has a funky hair-do.  He’s also incredibly intelligent and could spend a year teaching me what he knows about Asp.Net where I’m lacking.

The first four I just mentioned are great guys.  I’ve hung out with each of them in person, gotten to know them outside the realm of the blogosphere and emails and enjoy their company.  I know that I can sit with them for extended periods of time, devote attention and feel comfortable.

The last person in my list is Kimberly L. Tripp.  Her Sql Server knowledge is incredible, seems to be very personable and is very passionate about what she does.  I’m originally a database guy converted to developer, and sometimes really miss my roots.  Kimberly is exactly the type of person who could get me so excited again about databases that I could go back and give up writing code.

So there it is.  5 people I would love to spend a day with.  40 hours split evenly amongst that type of talent is worth 1 year of me ramping in my spare time.  If you want to be better at your own job, you need to surround yourself with people who are better at it than you are.  I could have easily named off just about everybody in my OPML as people I want to spend time with, but these are my top choices right now.

So what about you?  Who would you give up a day’s pay or 8 hours of vacation time for?