Dan Drezner posts advice about what to do (and not do) at political science conferences. Kieran Healy offers advice about what to do (and not do) at sociology conferences. I find it curious that their advice pretty much applies to economics conferences as well. (CalPundit thinks it is more than just an academic thing.) I have only one thought to add: the big names can be really, really dull. I once attended a session to hear a paper by a distinguished economist at Berkeley, and nearly fell asleep while standing up. I could not imagine a duller, more pointless paper. Afterward, I got a chance to read the paper, and I was amazed how much better it was in print. I don't mean that big names are necessarily dull by any means. Some are remarkably good. (I'm told by macroeconomists that Brad DeLong is very funny.) I note only that being a good economist is no guarantee of being an even tolerably coherent speaker.

Well, Brad DeLong's blog is often hilarious, so I think we might just stumbled onto another role for the blogosphere - filtering for the most entertaining presenters at academic conferences.

Bring a pillow if you ever attend a panel with the Samuel Huntington...

Bill, we had Brad up here for a conference we do every year, and I can tell you he was entertaining and extremely informative. If you get him to do economic history, he's positively entrancing. But then most economic historians (and law & econ scholars) are good at storytelling: the following year we had Joel Mokyr, and I thought he was even better than Brad.

I'm probably harsher on macro persons because that's my field, because I struggle to come up with good ones. Most of them are either quirky (Sargent would be one) or irritating.