here's how its supposed to work: you have a great contributor. someone who does a substantial amount of work and has come up with enough novel stuff to get a p

here's how its supposed to work: you have a great contributor. someone who does a substantial amount of work and has come up with enough novel stuff to get a paper published in the field. they go to the conference, and no you don't get their output for a few days...except some work on the plane and some nights at the hotel but they give a great talk, and learn about a bunch of new exciting things in their field to bring back with them. every time someone talks to this person and is impressed by their work, the name of your company gets associated transitively when the people at the conference think about a new job, or using a product in your space, they implicitly think 'foo co - thats a great place doing really cool stuff'