It's very expensive for me to go to a conference, because there are very few in our region, so most of the cost is travel and forgone revenue due to time off wo

It's very expensive for me to go to a conference, because there are very few in our region, so most of the cost is travel and forgone revenue due to time off work. Luckily, we have a thriving meetup community, with different companies hosting these every other week or so. Obviously, these are not conference quality gatherings, but you still get all the networking and in-person lectures, all at a cost of a bus fare. For conference talks, I just watch YouTube recordings. The good thing there is that you can skip irrelevant parts, rewatch interesting bits and, last but not least, multitask. I watch most conference talks while working out.