You're completely misunderstanding the purpose of a tech convention. The sport you need to play is "spot the customer".

You could be right, though I didn't spot very many I couldn't identify, it could be just what I was looking for. The company is selling to tech people in the company as a tech conference, but that doesn't mean that is really the point. (though I would expect the majority of our customers are not technical people, and thus I don't see how there is value in bringing customers in)

	▲	ghaff 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The customers are often not in the breakouts or even on the show floor much. When I was involved in my former company's event, there was a big customer briefing center that was back to back meetings with (typically) customer management at some level and a separate day track for executives. Even as an analyst--as I've been off and on--I didn't necessarily do a ton of breakouts. I'd watch the keynotes, whether in-person or streaming, and then it was hallway track, meetings, and usually some sort of separate analyst/media activity.

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ghaff 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There are community open source and adjacent conventions that don't really have customers or, necessarily, many managers there. I'll be at one in a couple weeks. But directly company-run events are absolutely about generating leads/business. A lot of foundation-led events are somewhere in the middle.