Dr. Bacchus has a great rundown of the different types of conference attendees and how to get the most out of the conference based upon your attitude going into it. He writes from a tech perspective, but there are a lot of truths to other professions (including librarianship) in his category descriptions. Put this one on your recommended reading list and amuse yourself by placing your fellow conference attendees into the different categories.
I think that I would place myself in the “Conference as social gathering” and “Conference as classroom” categories for the NASIG conference, and the latter category for all other library conferences.
