As an attendee, I don’t understand why you can’t just only do a few 1-1s with people who you are confident it would be useful to talk to, and go to talks or work for most of the conference time.
I assume that’s how the famous people you mentioned navigate these events.
I can imagine that for speakers it can be demoralizing to spend a lot of time preparing a talk for an empty audience, but that’s separate from the issues you mentioned.
As an attendee, I don’t understand why you can’t just only do a few 1-1s with people who you are confident it would be useful to talk to, and go to talks or work for most of the conference time.
I assume that’s how the famous people you mentioned navigate these events.
I can imagine that for speakers it can be demoralizing to spend a lot of time preparing a talk for an empty audience, but that’s separate from the issues you mentioned.