I recommend to chose one big conference and two specialized smaller meetings a year.

The smaller meetings are more productive and you have more time for interacting with your peers, plan new collaborations, plan new publications with co-authors etc. The coffee breaks at such meetings may be the most valuable time in an academic career ;-)  You could host one such meeting at your institution.

The big conference is for networking and getting an idea of new trends in the field of science at large. A good time to meet people in international agencies were you are a member - there is usually a Get-Together of these organizations at these big conferences. Also a good time to be introduced by collagues to other people in the field  (or introducing new colleagues to other researchers in the field, perhaps arranging some time spend abroad to learn other styles of working and other cultures). Do not try to see and hear all at these big conferences ... it is simply not possible. As with the smaller meetings ... the coffee breaks and talking to colleagues is often more productive than listening to that one extra talk  squeezed in between other talks.  Collect business cards - they may come in handy later.  

I try to give a talk or poster at any conference I visit - makes it easier to justify the cost of travelling to the conference. You will also be in any post-conference proceedings with your abstract or conference paper.

I would recommend smaller specialized high level groups rather than major (many thousand attendee) conferences.  Presenting your own work is  also important, particularly if you can get it published in high quality proceedings or in a journal special issue. No more than two good meetings/year..

International Conferences

Tricky, depends on the participant's interest.  As this is an unique environment (conference on the Cancer Biology) Program which supplements traditional learning with both depth and breadth of knowledge, It may happen that a concurrent session may of equal interest to the participant, where they have to forgo one (or) split time "half time" in both.

For me presenting my work, getting to see other people's work and making collaborations is important. And yes, venue is also important.

I like smaller specialised meetings where it's easier to interact, but it's good to go to a big international conference once in a while too. Getting updates and hearing about new methods is probably most important for me at the moment.

I'm a NMR structural biologist working in the graduate school of Pharmaceutical Sciences. I feel a certain distance between basic biology researchers and medical scientists. The latter usually do not attend meetings of basic biological scientists.  I think this tendency is not special in Japan. However, I personally feel basic biological scientists like me need more active collaboration with medical scientists.

I attend five to seven "Japanese" scientific meeting per year (medium or large sizes). I feel this number is too much. In addition, one or two meetings specialized to industry-academia collaboration. 

A good clue will be to check where the specialists of the field are going. For example,

 pick up names in publications and look for those in google, searching for invited lectures.

For me most important is to prezent my current research with immediate feedback. And on such a meetings you can allways find something interesting - some new idea, unknown person etc. I try not to exceed two conferences a year on topic possibly close to my work plus some extra invitations

I recommend to chose one big conference and two specialized smaller meetings a year.

The smaller meetings are more productive and you have more time for interacting with your peers, plan new collaborations, plan new publications with co-authors etc. The coffee breaks at such meetings may be the most valuable time in an academic career ;-)  You could host one such meeting at your institution.

The big conference is for networking and getting an idea of new trends in the field of science at large. A good time to meet people in international agencies were you are a member - there is usually a Get-Together of these organizations at these big conferences. Also a good time to be introduced by collagues to other people in the field  (or introducing new colleagues to other researchers in the field, perhaps arranging some time spend abroad to learn other styles of working and other cultures). Do not try to see and hear all at these big conferences ... it is simply not possible. As with the smaller meetings ... the coffee breaks and talking to colleagues is often more productive than listening to that one extra talk  squeezed in between other talks.  Collect business cards - they may come in handy later.  

I try to give a talk or poster at any conference I visit - makes it easier to justify the cost of travelling to the conference. You will also be in any post-conference proceedings with your abstract or conference paper.

In the restricted cancer area in which I am evolving I would say a meeting in which "no big stars" will come just to listen to them, glorifying themselves, and making their very own (hus rather biased) "personal" review of the literature.

I would also say (still in the cancer area) a meeting with new ideas out of the domains including "apoptosis - autophagy - cancer cell metabolism - angiogenesis - cancer stem cells - and so on ".

I think that a very intersting meeting is a meeting in which actual scientists (the definition of which is still to debate ...) come to present a "hot topic" with still few articles available on PubMed ... (< 50!!!!).

Instead of "big conferences ...", a personal in-depth review of the literature is 1,000 to 10,000 times more "productive" ... but less funny for lab-paid hollidays ...

Best regards

Robert

I go to conferences just to enjoy traveling and making new friends =D for me i can read one paper per day and its so good than a conference speech =D 

small specialized conferences and meeting are better for me, usually I go to introduce my latest work, get new knowledge from experts and interact with people in the field. usually one conference a year is fine for our part of the world due to scarcity of funding for conferences.