One my friends have attended Apple Developer Conference in past and he loved the whole process. But there is lot of money spent traveling to California, hotel stay, food .... But now with events being online it should save small companies lot of money too and hopefully Apple gets more participation with online format.
Cost isn't much of an issue. iOS developers tend to be paid well and even then it's often a reimbursed expense. I'm obviously not speaking for everyone here.
Most notably it's a means to network with other developers. One can recruit, find out more about other companies, meet the people working on their favorite open-source project, etc. Hands on technical support is significantly easier than doing it remotely, especially when external devices are involved.
Lastly, for many it's a chance to unwind and take a pseudo-vacation. The San Jose area has lots to do, there's plenty of evening events, and there's plenty of people who you'd have something in common with to socialize with.
Conference attendance not being encouraged is a red flag when looking at companies, in my opinion.
When I go to the in person conferences, it is easy to say I'm out of the office those days, and focus on the conference.
With the online ones, I always end up getting pulled into stuff, but it's ok because I can just listen in the background.
With virtual conferences, I definitely have a limit both because of distractions and just fatigue. It's one reason I've pretty much refused to pay for any of the conferences that were still trying to charge relatively big bucks last year. I just wouldn't have gotten the same value out of them.
I'm curious because so far I haven't attended any online conference: What has been done /experiment with during the last year especially to foster interaction between the people attending instead of just having someone talking into a camera?
Conferences in general? I hope not. Remote conferences just defeat the point. There's no food. No hotels. Nobody to chat with. Defeats the entire purpose if you ask me.
It's been the hardest thing to recreate, the hallway and lunch meetings (basically because it's hard to politely tell everyone to bug off in person but really easy to just log off online).
For most people "watching afterwards" is just another way to say "I'll watch it when I have time".