Check out Confabb
OK, so not everyone thinks the new IAEE blogs are all that great (see the comments to this post). But I challenge anyone to quibble with this one: Confabb. So far, the posts are uniformly good, I think. And it’s featuring Tim Bourquin, one of my favorite bloggers in the trade show space with Tradeshow Startup (check out his first post is about naming a show). The post on Web 2.0 and the tradeshow industry also is well worth checking out.
Related Topics: Trade shows, Uncategorized
October 14th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
While it’s been awhile since I’ve actively checked out new show/conference aggregators, I’m surprised I’ve never heard of these guys. The blog is OK, but it’s the aggregator site that’s more interesting to me. Seems it’s more a true IPO-seeking startup than most of the organic technologies and aggregators we’ve seen in the past decade.
Didn’t spend a lot of time poring over its strengths/weaknesses, but it does appear to be a closed-loop. They’d probably benefit from more API tie ins with Facebook/LinkedIn, etc, which I didn’t see. The whole idea of an Amazon (attendees who went to this conference also registered for these) for the conference industry is appealing. The question is, are conference attendees an actual community? Can they be molded into one? It’s interesting though. Thanks for pointing it out.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:52 am
Sue -
Thanks for finding us! The blog isn’t updated frequently enough for our liking, and we’re trying hard to rectify that with more posts from our own folks as well as industry luminaries like Tim. We’re glad you liked what you saw so far, though.
Rich - right now IPO is the furthest thing from our minds; we’re happy having gotten off the ground and getting the adoption we’ve seen so far. Our everyday lives are focused on making the experience on Confabb as good as it can be for conference organizers, speakers/presenters and attendees.
Your observations are correct regarding our structure; after launch we drilled into keeping the database clean and the largest on the web, and then adding new features. We started with new media monitoring tools (the ability to “watch” a conference’s progress over the web through the news sites, youtube, t’rati, del.icio.us, feedster, etc.) and then layered on top of that the social networking component so folks could find and connect with each other before, during and after the show.
We don’t expect the meetings industry at large would come together as a cohesive social network, but we do see an opportunity for ‘micro-communities’ built around shows, conferences and even distinct industries. It’s natural for people with similar interests to want to interact, and we’re a good place for like-minded folks to find each other. It’s keeping in line with what we see on the Web at large: people are more and more gelling (for lack of a better word) into loosely-aligned interest groups based on commonalities through many of the same tools we’ve incorporated into Confabb.
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