I find myself missing entire conferences for which I travelled continents for in the past! I just…don’t even know or follow them anymore! I never found conference talks good (too short to go into the weeds, too long to stay interesting), but I enjoyed travelling and meeting people!<p>Now with working from home, I am happy to do a good job and a conference adds zero value to my personal or professional life! There are so many screencasts out that I simply don’t watch conference talks at all anymore!
As you said - conferences were never about the talks. It’s about the meeting space and discussions with like-minded people over lunch; which is harder to replicate virtually.
AWS re:Invent was awesome last year but I'm not planning to go to any conferences this year. I'm really tired of the mask police and a few encounters with Karens last year really soured the experience for me. I'll wait until we are all either mask-free or wearing the scarlet letter on our chest. I really hope the social environment this year is not a repeat of the last two years with lockdowns, masking and vaccine booster mandates.
As you stated, if there is no social element to the conference, then it's better to watch at home.
For me conferences were never about learning but having some relaxing time with my teammates in a different country/city for a couple of days. The best tech talks out there are on YouTube.