Meeting professors at conferences

I would suggest the following for an early-career scholar:

1) Figure out who from your current university is going to be there and identify any other attendees you already know. Let them know you will be attending and hope you run into them.

2) Make sure you go make yourself available right from the beginning. Spend very little time in your room. Arrive early, hang out in the lobby near the conference registration area or wherever the coffee is. Go to all the breakfasts, lunches, etc.

3) When you see someone you know, go up to them, say hi. Mention that this is one of your first conferences and you are really interested in meeting people. Ask if there is anyone that they would recommend you meet. Then ask them to introduce you. This especially works if you are at the opening reception or something like that.

4) Repeat! If a chat is going well, eventually ask the new contact if there are others at the conference who are interested in your topics that they think you should meet.

5) Also, of course, go to talks. After the talk, make an effort to talk to the speakers with follow-up questions, etc. You can also follow-up with speakers if you see them in the hall later, etc. If these chats go well, you can even ask those people to introduce you to others they think you should meet.

6) After the conference, follow up by email.

The result of this strategy should be that most of your introductions will be peer-to-peer "warm" introductions, not out-of-the-blue "cold" introductions. This should make people a bit more willing to chat with you and make you appear to be more of a junior colleague and less of a grad student.

I would say there is honestly very little to gain by seeking out the very top researchers in your area and manufacturing a reason to talk to them. Why aren't you presenting a paper? That would have been your best way to present your work. Your second best way is to ask them questions about their work; meaningful ones, that show you are familiar with their work, understand it, and are interested in similar problems.

(Be very careful sharing your unpublished ideas with anyone who you don't already have explicit plans to collaborate with. For example, if you have them in written form as part of a postdoc application, that's okay. But I wouldn't explain any details to other researchers unsolicited.)