I agree! We wrote about this very topic in our blog a few months ago ourselves (http://www.effectiveresources.com/wordpress/?m=200907&paged=6). But I'd like to answer your "does anyone care?" question: you bet your sweet arse the conference producers care because they make a boatload of money from these events. Here is one comment made: "there's too much money to be made with conferences to let it all just fade away."