While I have never spoken at either a DjangoCon or a PyCon, attending them feels like taking part in a community where some members of that community are volunt

While I have never spoken at either a DjangoCon or a PyCon, attending them feels like taking part in a community where some members of that community are volunteering to speak and provide some content, the same way others are writing documentation, or submitting patches to open source projects. The "speaking" part of contributing content to the community is decoupled in my mind in "community-oriented" conferences such as these. There is far more value, at least to me, in these conferences, than the content of the sessions. It's the entire experience, the opportunity to network with others, that is worth it to me. In fact, this past PyCon, I only attended 2-3 sessions all week, figuring that I could watch the content online later and instead focused on interacting with others who I don't regularly see. Quite frankly, I would see it as a sign that someone probably shouldn't be presenting to the community if their motivation is to get out of paying the nominal conference fee.