I have attended many meetings. Some were good, some were not good, but some have the taste of promotions. In these kind of actions speakers often has pompous job title: technology evangelist.

To be honest I hate those kind of actions. In most cases the presentation contains a lots of slides that tell you why your current life sucks or your current programming style is way of blind mastodon from ice age. Your programming techniques should be preserved only in museums for record purposes. Then come the time when the shit hits the fan - their saviour solution. The only way to redeem yourself is to immediately adopt it because it is so sexy. Fortunately at the end comes my favourite part. The questions part.

My favourite question is

"When you would not use this solution ? What are the weak parts ?"

In most cases speaker is speechless. "Weak parts" are not promoted with joy. But on the other hand these kind of questions are the most important for you when you would like to adopt something. You have to clearly know what are pros and cons. When half of this question is not mentioned, it is "hurray programming" and amateurism.

Then you will realise that that speaker with that pompous title is just promoter and it is very probable that he did not use this technology in practise at all, except of some demo examples.

When you are listening to someone check his background first, his work. That is the only bulletproof measurement. Speakers without practise are probably marketing people that are trying to do their job: fool you. In most cases, it is a waste of time. Do the research by yourself...