That’s the real answer. Even as a mere self employed consultant I’ve been to conferences where I’ve gotten deals worth many time the cost of attending (e.g. spend $2k to land a $120k contract).
This is even truer in the scale of the really big players closing deals in the millions+.
Could you elaborate on this a bit please? How, when, which sector, is this specific to that sector/field of IT, how hard it is, who are the usual suspects, what's the success rate, do you have to pre-arrange meetings, book a room where you showcase your whatever...?
Why? The only way to replicate it is basically "do good work and network". I'm not going to be able to give you any secret sauce (because there is none, not because I don't want to).
Quite often it's not the deals that are made in conferences but the relationships (the "network" part). You hang out with a lot of people in the same industry as you, you get to know & be known by them.
And invariably when you know dozens/hundreds of people in the same field somebody usually needs some work done & is more likely to give that work to somebody they met in person vs someone anonymous off of the internet.
The "do good work" part is where you turn this into a snowball & get recommended around.
This is even truer in the scale of the really big players closing deals in the millions+.