Purchasing Introductions (A story about Nodeconf)

This is interesting. Is it worth it for individual persons to purchase $1000 conference tickets (plus travel) in the vain hope of meeting new contacts?

I was in a somewhat similar situation a few days ago: I'm considering re-joining the startup community after five years of practically doing nothing and I found myself looking at The Next Web conference tickets. They were comparatively cheap at about EUR 500. That's not a prohibitive price tag for me, but it's big enough to trigger thoughts like "is this really worth it or am I throwing time and money out of the window here?" In the end I didn't go to TNW, watched a few keynotes online and I have to say it's probably just as well. On the other hand, who knows it might have been awesome ;-)