I'm sure this has been posted somewhere before, but I couldn't find the answer to my exact question.
Basically, it's probably a bit late now as I've already been to two conferences... but I have always just submitted an abstract, turned up and given my presentation and never given it another thought.
Anyway, someone else in my group has just published a paper in the conference proceedings following presenting a poster and it got me thinking...

Was I supposed to have done that too?? I've never been asked to submit a full paper before the conference, but the abstract book has said to drop off the paper at the registration desk. Which I just ignored, assuming that I would publish in a peer-reviewed journal later.
Is it "compulsory" to submit a full paper? Obviously, the world hasn't ground to a halt since I haven't, but what does this mean for me since I never submitted them?
I assumed it was just optional for anyone who wanted to get another publication, but I was worried about copyright and publishing future articles on the same work so never did.

Actually, publication in conference proceeding is not necessarily a good or bad thing.

It is a good thing because you have "one more line" in your CV.

However, it may be bad for a few reasons:
1. Because of imminent deadline, the paper may not be of high quality.
2. You may feel bad later because there could be some typo errors or missing references etc...
3. The reviewers of your paper may know who you are...

When you submit a paper for publication, it could be improved significantly by several reviewers.
It is also possible that your supervisor may not be as good as these reviewers.

This is something that's really subject dependent. In my social sciences field on the rare occasion that there are conference proceedings, they aren't considered a 'proper' publication i.e. would be viewed as cv 'padding', whereas I know conference proceedings are quite highly regarded in computer science for example. If your field is article-led then you probably did the right thing, as there are some question marks over whether you can publish a revised version of a paper that appeared in conference proceedings later in a journal. Again it seems to be something where practice varies between subjects.

Hi,

in my field certain proceedings of international conferences are actually better than a paper in a low-rank journal with a much stricter peer-review process. These proceeding papers get many citations too.

xxx