Not questions your knowledge ink, just relaying my experiences, and it sounds like your are definitely a good resources ask questions of, bounce ideas off of, and ask for recommendations. Yes, a lot of tattoo shops and artists now are well worthless once you know what to look for, some aren't. I guess what are good pointers for Banshee to help him figure out how to sort out the garbage from the gems.
My current guy is in Orlando and I live in South Florida ... so three hour drive each way for me whenever I want to get work done. So yeah, find a good one that isn't a dick or a money hungry scumbag and stick with that person if you can.
I also agree about not everybody, or even most, at a convention being artists but at least you can see several people's work at once, see how they are, etc. Again, I think we agree on know what you want, it should have meaning since you will have it for a long time, come with some ideas (pictures, photos, something), and then research, research, research to find a good tattoo artist since a tattoo is not like an etch a sketch that you can erase with a shake.