A lot of people (those with less social desire/social skills) seem to resent it, but it is true: Networking and casual technical conversations that happen afterhours are the draw for many technical conferences. Talks can be good, and occasionally there are well-constructed lab sandboxes. But mostly, it's going and speed-dating with peers and sales teams to talk about your needs and architecture, and building a good web of contacts.
I also believe fully remote technical/collaboration work, without any periodic physical meetups, will be awful for a lot of people. Sure, those who bought into it pre-pandemic prefer it, and that's fine. But I really think there is concern to be had for the fraying of social bonds and teamwork that can be done, even (or especially) with people you have a tough time working with.
And it's even good that people who just go to sessions for the content will be able to do so--for a lot less money and effort. But I'm planning to go back to in-person conferences as soon as possible.
I honestly can’t believe this still sounds fun to anyone after a year of Zoom dystopia.
But everything else about virtual conferences has completely sucked and anyone running events is aggressively trying to get back to in-person. (With a hybrid component for presentations.)
The only thing missing is the after meeting drinks and dinner, but there will inevitably be services to put us all in a restaurant/bar environment, pipe in some bar white noise, have food sent from a local restaurant, etc. for an "in-person" virtual happy hour...