Responding to a post by Chris Adamson about iOS conferences, Marco Arment notes that podcasts and YouTube have partially replaced the need to sit in a room and listen to someone give a talk:
Podcasts are a vastly more time-efficient way for people to communicate ideas than writing conference talks, and people who prefer crafting their message as a produced piece or with multimedia can do the same thing (and more) on YouTube. Both are much easier and more versatile for people to consume than conference talks, and they can reach and benefit far more people.
It can’t be overstated how important it is to meet people face to face in our community. I forgot to mention this: I’ll be attending Peersconf in Austin this April. This’ll be a new conference experience for me and I’m looking forward to it.