Pictoplasma.

Pictoplasma is the biggest animation festival in the world and hosts some of the biggest animators and illustrators. Its hosted in New York and Berlin. The course I am currently studying does an annual trip to Berlin and sometimes New york, if you can afford it obviously its expensive.

There were a lot of good talks this year. One of them was one of my favourite illustrators Jeff Soto. His work looks absolutely amazing and a talk with him would of been a right treat. To be honest I think the Illustrators would of be more interesting than the animators this year.
Another example of a talk is Low Bros. I only discovered these through Pictoplasma. They do a lot of graffiti which looks amazing and makes you think 'how the dickens did they do that?' Its all free hand as well which makes the work even more impressive. Again a talk with the illustrators from Low bros would be a very interesting one.

Pictoplasma has loads of great workshops where you create characters and animate and basically learn so much about character design. You get to keep all of your creations and meet a bunch of interesting people. A couple years ago Matt stone and Trey Parker done a talk. Even though the animation in south park isn't exactly the most 'mind blowing' I am a huge South Park fan and I think a talk with them would've been fantastic.