I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized

I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized academics pontificating on highly esoteric subjects, some are places where people go to do million dollar deals, some are just thinly veiled excuses for people to expense their holiday to their company and some involve half dozen hackers sitting around a table knocking out code. And at some conferences all these things are going on at the same time. Basically any statement to the effect of "everybody does/nobody does X at conferences" is almost certainly false.