You think its &quot;phony&quot; when someone shows up at X conference transparently focused of talking about X?<p>You think its selfish when some knows how we wants to help, and wants to find the people  he wants to help?<p>I feel like I am taking crazy pills, where technical content gets zero attention in a technical project. It sounds to me like the conference are getting taken over by vacationers who want to have a party week (possibly soft-embezzled by expensing an employer) pushing out people who care about the project.<p>It reminds of when the college resume padders took over the high school math club, and instituted a substantial membership fee to finance a trip to a math competition where they didn&#x27;t actually compete, and I had to create a new club to gather people for math activities.