Finding Petroleum: Why attend SEG, EAGE, SPE, AAPG annual meetings?

I see that the annual SEG Convention was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, 25 – 30 October 2009, that is, last week.

Now as I recall Albert Einstein's definition of "ultimate madness" is... "Doing the same thing again and again hoping for different results"!

So my first question is this: why does anybody from an oil & gas company bother to attend such massive conventions, at least why do they attend more than once?
As it happens, I’ve been to the SEG in Houston at the selfsame Convention Center twice; I’ve also been to the EAGE in a handful of places, the AAPG International meetings in a couple of others. Goodness only knows I have a need to learn that is more than most folks’ but I can’t remember a single thing I learned from going to any of them! This isn’t to say I didn’t have a good time, nice meals, hospitality suites etc……but learn something – I don’t think so! I have learned a great deal from my colleagues in the industry but in partner meetings, on airplanes, at small conferences, from e-mails, on the InterNet, even at the Houston Astrodome (watching the Astros!).

My second question is this: why do oil field service contractors show up time after time to exhibit there? It costs them a lot of money – I heard the other day of a major contractor who had pulled out of one of this summer’s major conferences because the total bill for them would have come to $800,000…..yes, $800,000! – and time and effort. If the oil field services industry is really hitting such hard times that they have to lay off so many people, why don’t more of them cut out this sort of expenditure? And in any case I’d guess that a far better, more effective, way to explain your new technology, gadget or gizmo is to be asked to show up in a prospective customer’s office and tell them about it to them face to face?

I wonder if anybody has actually counted the total cost – in $s and CO2 expelled – of each one of these Conventions and thereby the annual cost to our industry? And figured out why they continue to be run, year after year?