Geeks on conferences
Keep conferences small: That’s what Robert Scoble, Microsoft blogger extraordinaire, says, if you want to keep it cost-effective for attendees and not take the financial risks.
But what’s even better is this post from Jeff Jarvis on why conference business is ripe for revolution.
Read ‘em and weep, or not, but the times, they are a-changing. What are you doing about it?
P.S. I got an e-mail yesterday from someone about the need to turn the whole conference concept on its head. She thought that the current model was working just fine. But look at the comments to Jarvis’ post, and tell me something doesn’t need fixing.
Update: Here’s a thoughtful post on E-Venting about what’s right about the current model, and what conference organizers can learn from the blogosphere. Some day, I’ll take the time to write thoughtful posts like this!
Related Topics: Industry trends and forecasts, Business stuff
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Hey Sue:
Thanks for the link to the E-vent post, it was very thoughtful and a good read.
I didn’t mean to suggest in my e-mail that the current system is “just fine”–I guess was too glib.
What I should have said better was that market demand for commercial conferences produces a glut of them–and that perhaps these folks (Jarvis, Scoble, et al) are suffering from an overdose. In that way, I disagree with the E-vent poster who talked about market demand–market demand doesn’t guarantee a plethora of quality products.
Also, the events I work on are association events–not produced for commercial purposes at all, but for governance, education, some product marketing (the exhibitors largely underwrite our costs), and of course, fellowship and networking. I think we go at it with a different mindset than the folks producing large commercial tech conferences.
That’s not to say that association conferences dole out their serving of conference with just the right blend of sweet and salty. And no–we don’t take many chances either.
Maybe it would help if we could develop conference survival skills for the attendee, and worry less about making the conference planners more sexy, dangerous, and visionary. I truly believe, and I say this having been disappointed to some extent about every single conference I have ever experienced as an attendee, that I don’t always recognize the ultimate value of a conference to me. And that meaning and connection often come belatedly or in unexpected ways.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
What, you don’t want to be more sexy, dangerous, and visionary (LOL). Kim, you make a great point about meaning and connection often coming where and when you least expect it. What I’d like to see is conferences being planned in ways that make those serendipitous connections happen more often, and that conference organizers do less relying on the same old, same old, and take a few more risks.
I think we all ought to keep an eye on what’s going on in the tech and marketing conferences, because these seem to be the early adopters of new ways of meeting. What they’re doing now, we all might be doing in a few years. Plus, these are where some of the most interesting conversations about conferences are happening, IMHO. Yes, most planners live in pretty much a different universe, but those universes may be colliding sooner than you think. Or not. We’ll see.
I do think it’s dangerous to rest on our laurels, though.
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