Gregory's ServerPosters are hugely under-rated as a form of presentation. My advice to inexperienced scientific conference-goers would be to attend oral abstract sessions only if you're SURE you're interested, and otherwise spend the time looking at posters. It's much more efficient because you can dismiss most of them at a glance while thoroughly studying those that seem worth it (and then seeking out the presenter if you want to discuss further).
@regordane @impactology This is the way. I’ve spent hours at poster exhibitions at SIGCHI, SIGGRAPH, and other international conferences. I often go there first & come back for any poster sessions to talk. I still think about some of them years later.
That’s where much of the emerging innovation and experimentation is going on because it’s grad students working hard to do something new. That’s where most of the available people that organizations want to hire are hanging out too.