Networking? Honestly, the kind where people actually talk to someone they don't already know-none of that "I'll just stand here and swipe LinkedIn on my phone" nonsense. Speed networking is fine if it's done with a bit of structure, but the best stuff happens in the gaps between talks when you're queueing for coffee and someone overhears you moaning about crawl budget.
As for "over inflated" prices-well, we lose money on ours every year, so the only thing inflated around here is my blood pressure when I see the final budget. It's not always greed, sometimes it's just the venue charging £800 for a cheese platter.
"Ivory tower hypotheses" - I'm guessing they mean talks from people who've never actually built a site or run a campaign, just theorised about one in a keynote. You know the type: "If we consider the semantic entropy of micro-topical clusters..." Bro, I just want my H2s to rank.
We do run a few of the bigger industry talks, but only because they're genuinely useful for newcomers-and let's be honest, sometimes even the old timers need a reminder that Google still wants you to write for humans. No ad pitch nonsense though, we ban that harder than a competitor spamming footer links.
