While I agree with the premise of what you're saying (and Web Summit are super spammy too!), I don't quite agree that "the only winner was the organizers". I'v

While I agree with the premise of what you're saying (and Web Summit are super spammy too!), I don't quite agree that "the only winner was the organizers". I've been at the last three Web Summits and while I don't think the stand is worth €1000 in itself, the Web Summit (including stand) totally are - but you get from it what you make of it. With sufficient preparation, Web Summit can be quite valuable. For example, in the last one we arranged meetings with both investors and potential customers weeks in advance of the event; we also printed flyers (which worked as people came to our stand saying they saw the flyers). Over all, it was very positive for us. BUT the reason for this is that we made use of the fact that a lot of people we wanted to talk to would be in one place. We didn't just go and hope people would talk to us, we arranged it in advance (and the flyers were bonus). That made it worth a lot more than €1000 to us. Would I pay that much just for a stand? Hell no. Would I pay to pitch? Hell no. Would I take advantage of the fact that such an event draws a lot of useful people? Yes, of course.