How do you network in online quant events?

I hate these Zoom events( business, quants, financial) that are online because you have 3-5 people talking about their topic and there are like 100 guest that just listen. How would you network? Cold messaging in Zoom? Finding their name in Linkedln and cold messaging them? It feels so creepy to do it, not that i care if i look creepy as long as i find cool people but if somebody would do that to me I would think they are a scam. It has happened before to me to get cold PMs in Linkedln from other people attending the same conference at they will sell you some bullshit Network Marketing type of shit.