If you want to, why aren't you doing a startup now?

You claim you can't afford to begin a startup, whilst thinking it's a good investment to spend money on startup-y events?

You will learn much more simply by:

a) buying a domain name

b) setting up some hosting

c) tinkering with your own ideas

...than eating a slice of pizza while listening to some startup god speak.

You can show some real progress in a few months with just 1 hour per day spent reading/thinking. Get to it!