It sounds like you've had a lot of bad experiences with conferences let you down by not focusing on the technical discussion. I'm really sorry you've had to go

It sounds like you've had a lot of bad experiences with conferences let you down by not focusing on the technical discussion. I'm really sorry you've had to go through that so often. In thinking about your predicament, it seems like there's an opportunity here for the organizers to put together an online forum before the conference so that people can put in for being put into groups and sessions where people have specific things that they want to talk about. It seems like both you and the other poster you were discussing this with were equally bothered by the other's preferred activities of conferences. I think if you could arrange discussions ahead of the conferences, you'd enjoy your time a lot more.