Conferences aren’t where you go for deep thinking, but you can at least learn about new things, even if you don’t have the time to get the details. A talk is basically an advertisement for some new thing, the goal of the talk being to get the viewer interested in learning more. The consumer of the talk is hoping to learn about new things, so when they get back from the conference they have more chew on for career/intellectual development.

A conference is a horrible place to be seen. Maybe a great place to see your colleagues/friends in industry, networking is definitely important.