If I was a fully funded academic, I'd agree with you. But the reality is I trade my time for money - to maximize the latter, appearing as a "leader" in my field requires I give talks to both technical and business tracks. The former might pay my bills (if they're a successful tech startup), the latter definitely will.

Conferences are great for networking and entertaining. They're not great for learning new stuff, there's much better media out there. I'm not sure what your gripes are with it.

Hmm why?