A word or two on conferences

I have to say that I am really looking forward to the Blogs and Social Media Forum that I am chairing in May.

When the idea was first suggested to me I was really unsure about saying yes. I have become very wary of being taken advantage of by commercial conference organisers over the years and was doubly wary of being associated with yet another money spinning, band waggon joining, pointless exercise.

However an hour long phone call with Lorna, the conference organiser, left me feeling that they really had listened to the punters and potential contributors when we said that we wanted more time to network and less time being talked at. I also believe that they have got together a pretty interesting bunch of people - and I for one am really looking forward to meeting JP Rangaswami whose blog is becoming a must read for me these days.

I was also very aware of the unconferencing meme going around at the moment but to be honest I am getting pretty tired of a small group of people who have attended mind-bloggling numbers of conferences, along with pretty much the same group of geeks, over the past four years in the US getting bored with themselves and declaring conferences dead. I know from experience that there are still a lot of people for whom "real" conferences continue to have value - especially for people who are new to a subject and not one of the chosen few.

And anyway - people like Chris Corrigan, Jon Husband and Johnnie Moore have been applying open space principles to group working for years very effectively. Getting a bunch of people to self-organise round things they feel passionate about wasn't invented by Dave Winer.

Comments

[Dave Winer]

"Getting a bunch of people to self-organise round things they feel passionate about wasn't invented by Dave Winer."

True, and that isn't what BloggerCon is/was about.

http://www.bloggercon.org/iii/newbies

The term "unconference" has been twisted to mean something very different from BC. Not my doing, btw.

Have a happy, if that's possible. :-)

[Cheryl]

Whatever you want to call it, with you in the chair, I will be there.... See you there !

[Bernard Goldbach]

Most conference organisers cannot think outside of the time-worn Powerpoint-centred pulpit focus. Fair play to you if the social side of the event is given more time than a toilet break. I've started attending conferences because of who will be in the foyer, not because of who is speaking. You learn more from conversations, not from being spoken to.