I guess it depends on your bias, if you're only interested in coding, then you should stay away from marketing/business conferences ... that said, I can relate to the idea that so called 'social media gurus' are snake oil salesmen.
True, but the title does explicitly state TECH conferences. I think those aren't the same as markeing/business conferences :)
In South Africa it's weird, Social media people are almost always speaking at Tech Conferences. This annoys the hell out of me because they are essentially marketers.