Aspie intellectuals tend to avoid talks/conferences?

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My aspie mentor seems to avoid going to talks or conferences on his subject where he is not a presenter. Even more so than this, he usually avoids going to conferences and talks where he is not the main presenter or the main organiser. He loves organising special talks though.

Is this a common aspie trait? Does he do this because he feels that people will judge him if he just listens, is uninterested in what others have to say, or what? Give me a few reasons if you understand this situation.

What is "common" is not liking dealing with the unpredictable. If he's not the organizer he's not in control, and has to be quicker on his feet intellectually. We tend not to function well in those situations.

His tendency seems very Aspie to me. I think it's almost to be expected.

I hate the socializing for everyone but me after the speeches. If I had someone who wanted to go with me, we could keep each other entertained and it would be fine. The problem is my dates find the speeches too boring to go more than once.

mostly mind numbing and followed by bad food and worse conversation, congratulate him on his taste

I usually don't like lectures at school, but I tend to like lectures by 'experts' or on a narrow/weird subject. Like...I went for an overnight visit at a college once. There was a professor giving a lecture (for fun) on DMX (the rapper) and relating it to Christianity and some certain philosopher. Maybe Kierkegaard, I don't remember. Anyway, I like lectures like that.

I don't think aspie traits can be so broad as "doesn't like going to talks."

I like going to the thesis defenses at my university, and don't mind public speaking myself, as it's not too different from normal speech and doesn't have the added difficulty of back-and-forth conversations.

But poster presentations... those, I absolutely loathe. Standing there and having to talk about your project to anybody who walks by, none of whom you know and all of whom will be expecting you to recognize them if they come up to you again... No way. By the end of that, I tend to be pretty much worn out. At the end of one such event, I actually bolted from the room, so impulsively that I didn't realize I had left until I had sprinted out of the building. I can really sympathize with little kids who just take off running like that; I don't blame them the least bit.