Dave Winer writes about the need to rethink conferences
“Why are you going to that conference?” asks Jack.“Just to hang out with the people,” says Jill.
It’s a cliche and nothing new. As long as I’ve been going to conferences, almost 30 years, that’s what people say, and do. Everyone’s in the room for the first few speeches and panels, but their eyes are fixed on their laptops. And after an hour or so, most of the people are out in the hallway.
I have a mixed experience regarding conferences. The Scientific ones I get to go are almost empty. Maybe because the speakers are professors or researches who usually aren’t that good in stage. But sometimes you do get lucky and some conference gets interesting (WMSU). Then you have the commercial ones (I’ve been only at TechEd2007 Barcelona and Techdays08 in which the hallways were empty! Yeah, some of the presentations were boring, but people just moved to the next room where the presentation was going better). Then you have misc conferences under some topic ( Technology, Design, Entrepreneurship, etc..) and those I’ve attended were cool enough for people to be there and focused!
I don’t have that feeling that conferences are boring, but that maybe just me. Unconferences are becoming quite popular, but I don’t think that will make traditional conferences go away. I really think the format of Take Off is the best for that content (although I may have to rethink the schedule) and maybe a panel after lunch would be interesting. If you think otherwise, be free to contact me with any alternatives.
Also regarding conferences, Seth Godin rants about organizers spending too much time thanking people. I disagree with him about this. I believe it’s important to let people know who made that event possible. Maybe it’s an organization, and you can’t have a photo (or maybe you can) or it’s a sponsor, and without them your conference would suck, and you should really give them some prime time, even if it’s only in the “thank you” form. Of course, you shouldn’t spend more than 2 minutes in this, but you shouldn’t replace it with some photo slideshow!