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In my experience, conferences are like a vacation where company expenses are wasted on food, and booze. If there is some learning in there, it's minimal. If you really want to hold a conference where people learn, how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

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> If there is some learning in there, it's minimal. If you really want to hold a conference where people learn, how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

That seems to me to be problems with individuals and not the conference. I've seen people go to conferences and basically skip out on half (or more) of the sessions to go drink and party, and I've seen other people stay locked in through the whole conference learning, taking notes, and participating.

For a company it may be hard to discern who is who, but I'd argue that somehow who squanders an opportunity and misuses company resources is not the person you want on your team.

On the whole, I've probably learned more at conferences from talking shop over drinks than from the talks. Many talks are hastily put together and poorly presented. And many are simply above or below whatever my skill level for that thing might then be (which isn't too say they don't have value, but compared to actual conversations with new and knowledgable individuals...). Maybe "industry" conferences are different from academic ones though.

But don't worry, I've never actually went to a tech conference, exactly because of the huge cost combined with not usually wanting to go to most talks. So I'm not going to be that guy on your team! :)

Lots of people actually don't like Las Vegas as a conference location but it has the air links, the conference space, and the hotels.

Besides most conferences I see are in San Fran, San Jose, NYC, or Orlando. I've only seen large conferences in Las Vegas DefCon, CES, etc.

Those sound like pretty desirable destinations to me. That's the point here. People use this as vacation, I sure as hell have.

There's some level of bonding with the food, booze, and HOPEFUL talk about what you learned at the conference or how you might apply it to what you're working on.

And because you're on a trip, there is less distraction from dog, family, costs.

> how about we stop having them in Vegas, or some other warm weather, party destination.

That's already true for the vast majority of conferences out there, so it's easy to fill the year while ignoring the party-destination ones.

My vote is for North Dakota in winter. We'll see how many people sign up for "learning".

It’s those destinations that have the draw and therefore infrastructure (accessible direct-flight airports, conference locations, cheap hotels) that make conference prices viable.

If you can learn one new thing though it can be worth it.

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