Or were there no ripe, young offspring to be had?
Ripe young offspring are, or can be, the result of scorings.
They tend to reach maturity (for eating purposes) after 18 to 24 months; if you're going to use them for matzoh, though, younger specimens are preferable.
The thing I like about conference presentations is that they force me to sharpen my thinking about a paper to the best achievable version of the research at that point. I find gaps or opportunities I hadn't realized before.
This is always more valuable than the public feedback, whether attendance is high or low (though high is always a nice ego boost - even if they're really there to see someone else).
Ahem. If one were to take the question seriously, I would say there's a close correlation between the tight focus of the conference and the worth of attending it. The smaller conferences, dealing with a relatively narrowly defined topic or theme, with perhaps a hundred-plus or so in attendance where almost everyone goes to almost every panel, are really intellectually worthwhile.
The bigger conferences are good only for gladhanding, and for showing yourself off. On that latter point, it shouldn't matter too much that the audience ignored the major part of your paper and talked about the coda. At least they were talking about the talk.
Maybe FL would have the effect he's looking for if he presented the interpretive dance version of his talk.