[alibarber]

Wise words from my PhD supervisor (paraphrased):

"The presentation is supposed to get them to want to read the paper and talk to you about it" - or basically, it's not a lecture.

[ghaff]

If you're only going to a conference to attend breakout sessions as if they were lectures, you probably should just stay home. It's one reason I think sessions should generally be shorter; they're to pique your interest in a topic, not be a comprehensive tutorial (unless they're actually structured that way).

I totally get that some people don't like the other aspects of conference-going and that's fine. They probably really are better off taking some days at home to read and watch videos.