For me the coolest thing is talking to some super knowledgeable people face to face... Chase Knight, Carl Foltz, Scott Keiffer, Warren Johnson, Ken Veney, Don Enriquez, Scott Hall to name just a few.
From a product standpoint, there was a young kid from Australia named Noonan that was building beautiful billet blocks, heads, manifolds, valve covers, etc. that were lightened to the max. His parts look like jewelry. Some interesting observations were Chemical Vapor Deposition coatings on rings and pistons, very thin (0.6 mm) rings and the GM LS motor appears to be future of hot rodding.