Meetups are usually a lot better for avoiding sales-related phenomena. And they are pretty topical, so you are almost sure to find a few good talks, they are not too long, and very much open ended, so if you bump into someone interesting you don't have to choose between skipping many talks or continue talking.
Most meetups here are 20-50 people (only DevOps Munich usually breaks 100 afaik) so that's not the type of event I meant - but barcamps with up to ~300 are still conference-like without the downsides, imho :)
