Side note: I’ve read the post on pocket first, and it simply omitted section 7 without any hint of its existence. Wonder if that happens more frequently.
As for the post itself, I do agree with most of it. I think though that it (particularly point 1) has some risk of reinforcing some people’s perception of reaching out to well known people as a potential status violation, which I think is already quite common in EA (although I know of some people who would disagree with me on this). I would guess most people already have a tendency to “not waste important people’s time” (whatever “important” means to them) and rather err on the side of avoiding these people and e.g. not ask for a 1-1 at a conference even though they might benefit greatly from it. To make it short, I agree quite strongly with your point 7, but not so much with (the general vibe of) point 1.
Highly agree with the post. I discussed almost the same thing with a friend during the conference. Basically, the typical “don’t attend talks, most of them are recorded and you can just watch them online later” advice isn’t great imho—it seems like a fake alternative to me, in the sense that you miss out on a talk because you tell yourself “ah I’ll just watch it later”, but in probably >90% of cases this just won’t happen. So the actual alternative you’re choosing is not “watch online later”, but “don’t watch at all”. Because by the time the talk is online, you’ll have forgotten about it, and even if you remember it, just deciding to watch a 30 minute talk at home on your own requires a lot more activation energy to overcome than, in comparison, the act of just walking to another room while you are at a conference.
Indeed 1-1s will be more valuable most of the time for most people, and it’s important to make this point to first-timers who otherwise might fill their schedule with talks and workshop. But if there’s a talk or two or three that are especially relevant to you, there’s a strong case to be made that you should attend it. Even if you’re sure that you would indeed watch it online later, it may still be worth attending merely for hearing the talk a few months sooner than you otherwise would.
Plus, you can also schedule virtual 1-1s with people after the conference, so it’s not necessarily that you’re missing out on anything. (and I’d argue a “hey, my schedule is pretty packed, would you be available for a zoom call some time next week?” message to an actual person will yield a much higher chance of actually happening than a vague “yeah I’ll probably watch this talk online at some point!” intention)