I've had similar thoughts a few times over the years. "Let me lock myself in an office for a week with a pile of books and YouTube and I'll learn more than any conference" - and I say that as someone who kept a full day at conferences and took notes.

What I realized is that the learning was supposed to come from talking to other people working on similar problems, as opposed to an earth shattering realization from the presentation itself. I remember one year when I compared notes with a few people on authorization approaches because we were getting ready to overhaul our authorization systems, and I found the random discussions very helpful.

That said, I still dream about getting to do a stay-conference, analogous to a stay-cation, but for learning.