Are you referring to conferences like SES? I've been to SES and PubCon, both were pretty good. PubCon was geared more towards developers where SES was more towards marketers and straight SEOs work. Both worth while if that's what your asking about.
I've been to SES. I was just wondering what feedback people had on those types of conferences. I liked SES, and while it was very informative, it was mostly dry. I think I counted one speaker say the phrase "its notable to mention" 9 times in 5 minutes. Anyways, do you think these conferences are worth the money?
It really depends on who is speaking. I've been to one where Aaron Wall was speaking, and that was pretty decent. But when you get conferences where the speakers are a bunch of nobody's it's not much fun. The last conference I want to (a few weeks ago) had Flint McGlauglin speaking. I thought that would be really interesting...but I was quite disappointed. (Flint is the CEO of Marketing Sherpa, holds a Ph. D in algorithms, and is one of the top people in the industry, but he isn't a good public speaker, I found him to be very boring and too scientific). It just really depends on who is speaking.
Depends on what you are looking to get out of the conference. SES has always been informative for me, but each time I go I have a specific topic I want to focus on so if I happen to hit one bad session it doesn't really ruin anything since there are other sessions around that topic that will make up for it. When I do go to a conference with no real session focus I try to shift gears and work on networking more. I guess each conference is what you make it really.
SES is usually good Ad:tech is ok Shop.org is worthwhile as is eTail if you are in commerce FOOA often has valuable innovation coming out of it I'd love to have you all join me in an online marketing conference calendar group that promotes all industry events as well as giving you the chance to add your own http://www.zvents.com/groups/show/4944-Online-Marketing