There is little value in attending events with $3000 price tags. You get to hear Sean Parker speak, which is also posted online and they usually sneak speakers out of the back to a car or to the speakers lounge so that they don’t have to interact with attendees. There's nothing wrong with this, just that conferences can oversell the value.

I've spoken at a few startup conferences, mostly because it's a great way to meet investors, other founders and useful contacts. The ones I found most valuable as a speaker and attendee were the events that were less well known. My favourite for meeting great people was in Luxembourg and ran at the same time as LeWeb London, where most of the tech elite were. http://www.ictspring.com

I got to speak to Randi Zuckerberg, Hiroshi Mikitani from Rakuten but far more importantly a lot of great investors and founders from Silicon Valley that were actually creating value. The people that speak at the top conferences aren't necessarily the people building the best companies

Startup school is a great balance between both, you hear from some of the best thought leaders in tech that don't speak very often and get the opportunity to meet lots of people in a similar position to you.