As a researcher and an academician I get many opportunities to give technical lectures on various aspects of computer science. On the other hand, a formal occasion to share other important but non-technical ideas rarely comes by. Recently I was presented with one such opportunity quite unexpectedly. I was attending a two-day conference on parallel and distributed computing, where surprisingly many of the participants were teachers from various undergraduate colleges. Though the organizers had initially invited me to give a technical lecture, they later requested me to deliver the inaugural address as well. I approached the dais with great trepidation, because I had little experience in giving non-technical lectures. Fortunately, by the time I completed the preamble to my talk by presenting a quick overview of the various technical sessions that had been planned, and also by congratulating the organizers for their good work in planning the conference programme so well, I could make up my mind that the theme of my talk would be to motivate the audience to meaningfully participate in more conferences. What follows below is an annotated transcript of the rest of my lecture.