Conferences and conferences

Being a veteran of business association conferences, I am actually beginning to enjoy them. One can kick back, switch off and wake up at intervals to eat the sumptuous meals of the host hotel. Alas, I believe the clientele for such conferences is sharply reduced.
Not so in Davos, where hundreds of top business and policymaker types are merrily pontificating away. The number of sessions is vast and topics cover the gamut of anything the world may currently be thinking of. At the end of the conference, everyone will feel good about having contributed to global thinking, having met friends and competitors, and spent money wisely. The outcomes will then be written out by a small group of backstage beavers who get to decide what to include, what to leave out, and what to put in the mouths of the policymakers. Nobody checks to see if the panelists actually said what comes out in the summaries and reports. That's the interesting thing about conferences.
But then nobody reads conference reports either. So ultimately, the question is why do people spend money attending conferences? Most of the time, they are in the audience with little scope of contributing as moderators often do not even take questions. Do they want to listen to conference veterans? Do conference veterans find it useful to pontificate at conferences? Is the networking such an important part of the conference that people are willing to spend the money? All these and more question bother me about the entire conference industry. But hey, as long as they are there, I get to eat!