[tomjen3]

I understand your concern, but with the exception of Apple most of the interesting tech is talked about in blogs long before conferences and you can download almost any open source stuff and play with it from your home computer.

What then is left?

[largesse]

No concern, really. It was just an observation. I don't think tech conferences will ever go away unless travel becomes prohibitively expensive or there's some sort of a global pandemic. People in the same industry like to get together to discuss their work, and I think they always will.