As a special bonus to you I present a bonus page for your enjoyment:

If you're going to any kind of conference you'll want to insure that you make the most of your time.  Below I've assembled a few handy pointers to help you do just that, so follow along with me and learn!

All of these happened in sessions I was in, and happened by the end of only 2 sessions.

General Best Practices:

• if you have a cell phone / pager / general annoying electronic device there's no need to set it to silent or vibrate or god forbid turn it off.  You are obviously important and people need to understand that by the number of people trying to get a hold of you via your technological umbilicus.
• As far as cell phone use, if you have somehow mistakenly left your cell phone on silent or vibrate and get a call, this is your opportunity for redemption as you can now feel free to talk as loud and as long as your obvious important station in life dictates.
• if you've gotten bags and bags of free crap, be sure to cart them around with you everywhere, failing that, it's a good idea to find the largest North Face or Columbia or Prada or HillFinger backpack that you can, and be sure to stuff it beyond capacity with garbage like clothes, electronica, and snackage (aside, of course, from the bevy of free crap from the event floor)

• don't bother showing up on time; when you do arrive, be sure to enter the room and allow the door to slam really, REALLY hard.
• if you have, in fact, taken the steps to arrive late - be sure to also leave early.  Here again, it's best policy to insure that you slam the door as hard as possible as you get on with your busy day.
• and if you arrive late / leave early, be sure to make sure that you take a seat in the near middle of the longest row of chairs in the room.  Where at all possible, try to insure that getting to and from this particular seat requires that you pass in front of the projection device being used for the presentation.
• once in your seat, now is a great time to dig into that suitcase slung on your back.  If at all possible, smack 2 or 3 of your fellow attendees with it as you pull it off your back.  Once off, hopefully you've selected a back pack with zippers or Velcro that, when utilized, make a noise similar to a hole being torn in the fabric of space.  Be sure to get out your PDA, Cell phone, blackberry, camera, treasure troll, lucky sock, gourd that looks like Ladybird Johnson, etc. and arrange them all about you before finally settling in and paying attention.
• if through some odd misfortune you happen to be early to a session, insure that you take the first seat in the row - everyone else can just go around, and you simply must leave those middle seats in front of the projector open for your peers with the good sense to show up late
• did I mention to bang the door?

• bring enough crap to eat so that you are basically in motion for the entire session getting to, enjoying, or getting from your snacks
• make sure that whatever snack you settle on, it's packaged in a very thick and preferably oversized  cellophane product, making the enjoyment of that snack an audible as well as a taste sensation
• choose a tiny snack like raisins or Goobers or peanuts, this will allow you to eat them one at a time, repeatedly digging into your crinkly-crackly cellophane bag again and again and again and again in rapid, seemingly ceaseless succession
• however, small size can be overlooked if the snack in question is really, really crunchy like Lay's UltraSlabs or Dorito's ExtremeMolarBlasters or something like that
• when you are finished with your snack(s), be it a bottle of water or a cup of coffee or a big cellophane bag of raisins, it's best to leave the waste container from your snack right where most of the sessions attendees will be walking at the end of the session - you are far too important and likely have cell phone calls to get to, so someone else can surely clean up your filth and debris

• when attending a conference event, there's really no need to weight yourself down by bringing too many clean clothes - the stuff you have on today will surely be just as good tomorrow, and very likely the day after that as well
• there's really no need to shower when you'll be sitting side-by-side with dozens of strangers - even though you might smell like a baboons ass-flap, there will certainly be someone in attendance that has put on half a bottle of White Shoulders or Brute or High-Karate to more than compensate for any effluvia you might be radiating.  Same goes for dental hygiene - you've spent lots of cash on coffee, cigarettes, and Doritos, might as well keep that taste (and scent) in your mouth for as long a possible.
• the right foot apparel is paramount to a good personal presentation; try to select a pair of old leather sandals - really, really old.  Once you've located said "sandals of antiquity", there's certainly no time like now to stop washing your feet and / or trimming your toenails.  You should be proud of the fact that if you were, in fact, an eagle you would have little or no problem swooping down from the clouds and snatching a Salmon from a small babbling brook with your impressive talons.  The age of the sandals and the time since your last rinsing will also insure that your feet smell like rotten lumps of meat, and that's always a plus - if you can't get 'em with the talons it's always good to have foot odor capable of knocking a buzzard off a shit wagon at 50 yards.  Socks are a communist plot!

• talk as much as the presenter; ask loads and loads of questions that very likely would have been addressed for you had you read the course description or knew the first thing about the topic of the session - remember, things like "course description" and "intended audience" are for the little people
• if the first few slides of the session presentation includes foils called "Agenda" and "What we won't cover....", it should be immediately obvious that the things you need to ask about are contained on the slide entitled "What we won't cover...".  Here again is your golden opportunity to talk, at length, about what is most important to you - remember, it's not "our" time that counts, its "my" time that counts!
• when asking a question, by all means make no attempt to speak clearly or project your voice in any way, people should want to hear you repeat things 2 or 3 times anyway!
• if you and another member of the audience have heard all of the presentation that you want to, now is the perfect time to start talking to one another.  No need to whisper or leave the room, it's quite obvious that since you're now talking the important parts of the session have already passed.  If others in the room try to find polite ways to get you to STFU be sure to simply act as though they are addressing the presenter and surely not you.  The same holds true if someone, say a tall guy with a crew cut & big nose, turns to you and says "Shut up" - he's obviously not aware of how important you are and should be ignored

Lastly, while I can't speak for the ladies - you guys that attend the conference sessions be sure to piss all over everything in sight when in the men’s room - after all, once you're done - who cares?