Yes, I work in machine learning and some (many) of the conferences are very scary politics-wise. Personally I think it's better to focus on conferences that ar

Yes, I work in machine learning and some (many) of the conferences are very scary politics-wise. Personally I think it's better to focus on conferences that are smaller and more niche and don't have the baggage that comes with getting big and famous. Any time spent on politics is time not spend on actual research discussion