I'd say this is true of almost all corporate conferences

I would strongly agree. Having been to a lot of industry conferences all over that world it's just the same.

Part of the problem is that the conference organizers open up panels to press and panellists (including me) are then very restricted on what we can say. The panel becomes a hash of corporate sound bites which no one likes.

To counter this increasingly panels are being requested to be under Chatham House by the companies paying to attend and sponsor.

Similar thing happened to me at a surf competition at an anon place. People were flown in from everywhere, my surfboard arrived too late because the plane sucked.

But as me, everybody just gathered at the hot tub, nobody took part at the real sports event, we just fooled around and were happy to meet people from all around the world. Brazil, Hawaii, Germany, Canada, US. Really nice event. No idea if there even was a winner at the event. Maybe they did put something onto the web page, but nobody cared.