In a new post to her blog Anna Filina looks at another side of conferences (technology or otherwise, really) besides just the usual goal of attending every session that sounds interesting. As she suggests, conferences are also a great place for networking.

There are many networking events, but I find that the best ones are Web conferences. It is where you meet other geeks like you, book publishers, great contacts at some of the biggest companies, contributors to your favorite open source projects, potential start-up partners and the list goes on.

She touches on a few topics to consider when coming at the conference from a networking angle - why you should care, how to make the time to really get to meet and know people, keeping track of those you meet and whether or not the conference organizers care about the networking environment (hint, they do).