Having recently attended my first conference, I can say that I gained a LOT more tacit knowledge than explicit knowledge. I got a feel for the types of people doing all the work behind the scenes to make things actually happen, and a generally much broader perspective.
Reading and researching independently and interacting with others with a similarly narrow focus doesn't lend itself to comprehensive understandings. I try very hard to always get a feel for the big picture before diving into specifics, but individuals or small groups can only ever develop a few ways of looking at things and attacking problems.
In short, you learn the answers to all sorts of questions that you never even thought to wonder about. You can't google unknown unknowns.
I'm asking this as a follow-up to http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/, which was written a few years ago, and which I find very interesting.
Many of the arguments advanced in http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/ (especially inaccessibility) could just as well apply to conferences, too.
I'd also wonder - would you consider conferences to also be a terrible discussion forum? What do you think would be some good alternatives?
The audience for conferences is limited, and people seem to remember only a tiny tiny fraction of everything they've encountered in a conference. The ideas in conferences don't seem to do much for building up platforms of public discussions around the new subjects that are often announced in conferences (rather than, say, on online platforms).
I suppose one could advance the argument that ideas often get brought up/discussed at conferences that wouldn't be conveniently discussed in any other medium (for now..). But is this mostly because people are too comfortable with what they're been brought up with?