Comment Waste (Score 1) 182
In general, just about every conference I've been to has been a waste of money. The only real benefits I have gleaned from them have been free software for development use and/or making contacts. In general, the information that I would receive from the confs. is more readily accessible online or through books. An example would be a yearly conference that I used to attend for a particular software that I develop. On average, the conference + hotel + travel would run me about $6000. It was a massive waste as, all we really spent time doing was drinking and chumming around. In 3 years, I might have had 1 or 2 actual lectures or Q&A sessions that had any real benefit.