Most conferences are boring.
The sessions are pleasant enough, but they're typically about experts pontificating over The Issues. But CFP96 was as exciting and interesting as such a conference could reasonably hope to be. CFP96 was about the interactions of technology and society. That's a well-worn theme. But what made the conference so special was that every session had relevance and urgency and deep implications which raised it far above the general media meanderings typically seen on its topic.