Conferences are different from what you expect. Some are fully funded by vendors. At those, speakers need to be sufficiently reputable and independent that their words are distinguished from sock-puppetry, or they will be ignored by physicians who cheerfully fill their plates at the shrimp buffet but won't change their prescribing or other habits because a sock puppet spoke. Vendors know this and offer significant assistance to independently credible speakers to turn up. Such speakers are well aware of the danger of being seen as a sock puppet, so they are scrupulously careful what they say.

Really have to ask you to attribute shrimp buffet references to my buddy Terry Thurber. He's the one who patented the phrase. :)

And speaking of conferences, I'm doing a couple of sessions at VS Live in D.C. this week. Not sure if they have shrimp, but I'll check.