Scientific conferences are now happening inside World of Warcraft. That should help with travel costs, but on the downside it’s harder to get smashed and wake up in a competitor’s hotel room*.
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(*) Seriously, the bar is the most underrated part of a conference. Sex isn’t even an essential point – I missed out on that part, but I did get propositioned once, for a postdoc job. Both of us were Dan Rather plus eight (i.e., not sober) and we’d had one of those free-ranging, loopy scientific conversations that can’t happen in front of a poster or during the Q&A after a talk. That’s also why small conferences are more productive than the mega-attendance kind – most of the important people all go to the same bar.