A week and a half ago I attended the 17th annual IT.CAN conference. The conference was more educational than I expected (i.e. less networking). Although the IT/tech bar is a fairly small group of people the conference was still accessible and open to new people like myself.
I wish I had attended IT.CAN as a student because it would have opened my eyes to the areas of practice within tech. I strongly recommend it to anyone considering the field (and there's a very cheap student rate).
The conference was well run and I'm sure I'll attend again.