1. Conference= meeting (large OR small group of people) PRIMARILY designed for EXCHANGING INFORMATION or attending speeches, workshops, classes, etc. for learning new information Examples in the US: *parent-teacher conference *business conference *Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/) 2. Convention= meeting (large group of people) PRIMARILY designed for those who SHARE SOMETHING IN COMMON (Sometimes, conventions are similar to conferences, as , naturally, people who have something in common also wish to share/discuss information as well.) *political convention *Comic-Con Convention (http://www.comic-con.org/) *******In Summary******* *Conference*- Meeting for exchange of information *Convention*- Meeting for people who have something in common (which often also results in exchange of information) Source: self (American English)

A convention can also be used in the sense of a large meeting of people, I would say that a conference usually has some sort of educational focus, A convention can be just a meeting of people with similar interests. The defining thing would be the size. A meeting of a few people would not be a conference or convention. We would be talking about hundreds of people attending before I would consider it a convention or conference. Also note that a "conference call" may be a shared (group connected) call of just 3 people. Example. A Star Trek Convention. An Internet governance conference. They seem to be used interchangeably for large meetings though. Andrew.

Their meaning are totally different! Conference means a meeting between 2 or more people to discuss on something. Convention means agreement.