About half of my closest professional peers are folks I know from conferences and/or upgraded from “person I read on Internet” to “actual friend” as a consequence of them. I think also probably 25% or so of my consulting clients met me at a conference.https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/938226699178672128 …
I am terrible at conferences, and generally need to collapse at the end of the day (often much earlier than would be optimal), but I do work them.