Rethinking the Conference Structure – Time to Step it UP

Mark Oehlert attended TechKnowledge ’09 and his thoughts were very similarly to mine: Conferences need to be updated.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately (with my spare brain cycles) and would like to expand on a few of his points.

“Social media should be the default and should kick in as soon as I register and continue past the conference.”

Ohhhhhh yes.  Specifically, I should have the contact of everyone else who has signed up – their blogs, their twitter handle, and anything else they want to share with us.  Most importantly, I should have access to the presenters themselves…

“Whether or not I’m a speaker or an attendee, I want input into what will be session outcomes. Asking me to pay, go to a session and then fill out an eval so that NEXT YEAR will be better is a little backward isn’t it?”

Yes, Mark, it is. (But not that it shouldn’t be done.)  This is the reason we should have access to the presenters.  I want to let them know where I am coming from so they understand my situation.  If many of us do this, they can focus their presentations A LOT more on what will be of most use.  Let me give you an example…

A couple years ago I was talking with Josh Bancroft at a cub scout function where our wives were leaders.  He had just attended Gnomdex in Seattle and had mentioned that it was brutal for a particular speaker.  Why?  Paraphrased, “While he was giving his presentation we (the attendees) were on Twitter asking questions of each other, figuring out the basic things.  When he was done and was ready to take questions, all the small things were out of the way and we had the tough questions for him.  Having expected the same easy questions, he was not ready for our targeted, more difficult questions.  It was brutal for him.” (Sorry, Josh, if I butchered that.)  That has always stuck with me.

Taking a lesson from that conversation, why can’t we have access to the presenters BEFORE the conference and help them get through the easy questions to the tough ones, those we REALLY want answered?  Much more targeted, tactile and actionable topics that will allow us not only take the next step when we leave the conference, but leap.

“FIGURE OUT WIRELESS!!!! I don’t give a rat’s *** how you do it, just freaking do it. Do you understand the good will and PR you will reap? Do you? I know this diff between simple and easy – this one might not be easy but it sure is simple – get it done.”

I can’t say this enough.  If you don’t give me access – full and reliable – you have cut yourselves off of free publicity and a MAJOR advantage of a conference in my mind.  I will be MUCH less likely to come to your conference.  A lot of it is being able to social in this way, updating my blog, quickly checking work when I need to, browsing to information as I need it in or out of a session, mashing up my knowledge with the knowledge I am receiving.  No Wireless – No Attendee.

“I’m also going to risk some wrath here and say NO to Vegas as a location. I’d actually rather be in Chicago or New York or San Francisco or Atlanta – if you want to hold a conference somewhere that has tourist appeal, then hold it somewhere with broader tourist appeal.”

I am done with Vegas. Enough said.

There are more thoughts I have about how to increase it the user experience, but I won’t bore you.  They are more of the nitty gritty stuff.  But overall we need an overhaul.  Some conferences are inching there which I love to see.  But we need more – I say take the leap.

MY CHALLENGE TO ALL CONFERENCE PLANNERS:

Who is going to lead the change? Who is going to engage the would-be-attendees BEFORE the conference and get their ideas of what they would like?  How would they like it structured, topics to be covered, modes of learning and interacting, etc.  Who is going to engaged the participants before and during and after the conference and realize that they have the power to bring together a ton of people not only for a few days, but ongoing?

I have been thinking about creating a conference just on Social Learning and adding in all these elements.  Oh, how I would love to do it – If only I didn’t have to sleep!

Tagged as: conference, social media, Twitter, wireless