[ghaff]

Newsgeist may be the type of event that people feel passionate about but can't really justify taking time off from their day job to attend. I agree that weekends work for something like that. However, the vast bulk of conferences that I attend are primarily people attending on the company time and dime and most would not want to go to a weekend event.

I know I wouldn't. Just for one anecdotal example, there's a yearly local event tangentially related to my work that I've attended and led Open Spaces at. But it's on a Saturday (on what is invariably the first really nice spring day of the year). I've stopped going solely for that reason.