The mood at Smalltalk Solutions was great this year, and no wonder - take a look at this post from Dave Buck, where points out:

• Last year was the best year yet for Cincom Smalltalk. Their revenues are growing and they have been consistently growing ever since they acquired VisualWorks. They are also seeing some new projects starting up in Smalltalk.
• Last year was GemStone's best year in their last 26 years in business. They are landing big projects and are seeing lots of interest in Smalltalk.
• Instantiations says "Last year the software industry grew at about an 8% rate while Instantiations grew at substantially more than that rate and our VA Smalltalk at an even better rate than that!"

You need only look at seaside.st and squeak.org to get an idea of the activity levels in Squeak; suffice to say, it's high. When I give Smalltalk/Seaside talks to Ruby groups, turnout is always good, too. It's a great time to be looking at Smalltalk!