Meetups are great, conferences not so much. With the latter, the scene away from the official event is better, where the networking and pleasure wait. The event itself is for photographs, social media, perhaps journalism. Signal? Roll the dice.

I've been to a couple BTC conferences. Shrug. Worth $350? No. I've got a few cool pictures though. Maybe the small ones are better? Doing it over I'd still go, but skip the event. This will be my MO at the Adobe MAX convention in LA this October: livestream the damn thing on my laptop, so when someone asks what I thought about such-n-such a presentation, I can nod and riff, then move a seat closer and drop an orange pill in their drink (kidding).