Unfortunately I'm as clueless on this as you - I'm mostly going on the papers that my professor suggests (cs165 and cs265 at harvard, the syllabus is public). T

Unfortunately I'm as clueless on this as you - I'm mostly going on the papers that my professor suggests (cs165 and cs265 at harvard, the syllabus is public). Though VLDB and cidrdb seems like two conferences that seem to publish the most famous papers. Eventually you start learning the names of the authors, etc.