When Demo 09 kicks off Monday in Palms Springs, Calif., the high-technology showcase conference that prides itself on putting cutting-edge companies in front of A-list venture capitalists and journalists will do so in perhaps the worst economic environment in modern tech history.
Exhibitors at Demo pay well into five figures for the privilege of giving a six-minute presentation to a room full of influencers--many of whom have paid up to $3,000 to be there. So one could wonder whether the show can maintain its relevancy while companies are shedding record numbers of jobs, when credit is as tight as it's been in decades, and in an era where tech firms have more ways to promote themselves than ever before.
Yet Demo is not alone in its class: smaller tech conferences of between several hundred and several thousand attendees, such as TechCrunch 50, AlwaysOn, and those run by the GigaOm network. And with money being as tight as it is and the Internet and social media allowing start-ups and companies with new products to bypass traditional promotional methods, one question is obvious: Do we need these conferences?
The answer, according to conference organizers, attendees, and journalists, is yes. But we don't need all of them. And it seems likely that over the next year or two, unless economic conditions improve dramatically, only those conferences that can provide the kind of value that attendees and exhibitors alike need--a solid focus, great content, a long list of influencers, high production value and exceptional networking--will make it.
"I think every business in general is at risk to some degree right now," said Eric Faurot, a senior vice president at TechWeb, which puts on the Web 2.0 conferences, as well as many others. "In the event business, the stronger events, the really healthy events that have a real purpose to them, will emerge stronger, and weaker events will just die. They just won't survive."
Demo, of course, is in a transition period. It announced earlier this month that its longtime director, Chris Shipley, would be stepping aside after its fall 2009 iteration and that VentureBeat CEO and editor-in-chief Matt Marshall would be taking over. Marshall will appear on stage with Shipley at next week's event.
The Demo formula
Some might say that Demo's model of charging a fairly hefty fee to exhibitors, as well as several thousand dollars to attendees--not to mention the fact that it's held at pricey resorts in out-of-the-way places like San Diego, Palm Springs, and Phoenix--would make it a candidate for extinction. But Demo may in fact have just the right formula.
Asked if his software company, Bomgar Corp., would exhibit at Demo in the future after having done so two years ago, CEO Joel Bomgar was unequivocal: "Absolutely....We considered it a huge benefit when we did it."
Bomgar said he had paid $18,000 to present at Demo, and wouldn't blink at paying such a fee again, even if it had gone up a bit.
"If it was a matter of spending $20,000 to get in, we would alter our budget" to do so, said Bomgar, who is speaking on a panel at Demo next week, but who otherwise has no connections to the show. "All of the (benefits it offers), you can leverage to a value that far exceeds $20,000."
To Bomgar, one of Demo's most valuable functions is its traditional filtering process, in which organizers whittle down hundreds of companies--all of which are willing to pay the five-figure fee--to the between 65 and 70 that are finally chosen to present.
"The media and the venture capitalists show up to a show like Demo," Bomgar said, and "they know they're getting the cream of the crop. If they were just getting a random selection, that's instantly less compelling, rather than getting a focused group."
For Michael Arrington, who wears the hats of both a prominent tech journalist--editor of TechCrunch, which he founded--and one of the organizers of TechCrunch 50, a conference's value comes from the people he meets.
"I need to be around CEOs," Arrington said, "because they're the ones that will talk (about what their companies are doing). And there needs to be a lot of news breaking."
That's the lesson conferences can learn in order to stay vital, Bomgar suggested: Give the press and the money people the confidence that they won't be wasting their time by attending, and they'll go out of their way to come, regardless of where the event is. And if the media and the top VCs are on hand, then serious companies that are committed to building their businesses will line up to exhibit, even if they have to pay a hefty fee to do so.
The TechCrunch 50 model
There are other models, of course. For example, TechCrunch 50, an annual show in San Francisco put on by, among others, Arrington and Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, gives a select group of start-up tech companies a chance to showcase their wares in front of many of the most prominent tech journalists in the world--without paying a fee.
"We don't charge anything (to exhibitors) for TechCrunch 50, so the only cost is people's time," said Calacanis. "In a down market, many intelligent and creative people have extra time. There is literally zero cost to the startup....If they make it to the main stage, they get $250,000 to $1 million worth of exposure in my estimation."
And according to Calacanis, the TechCrunch 50 model seems to be working pretty well. "We've seen more demand for this year than the previous two years in terms of companies asking us for the deadlines,speaker requests and sponsorship."
Still, expecting conferences to expand in this environment is unrealistic, said TechWeb's Faurot.
"You can't defy the physics of travel restrictions, and paying for conferences," said Faurot. "So any event that doesn't have a rock-solid position is at serious risk...You're going to sell less conference passes than last year, and you're going to sell less sponsorship than last year."
He explained that while TechWeb considers itself fortunate to have "the market leader" in several conference categories, it is without a doubt seeing the effects of the economic downturn. Faurot said where growth for some of the shows might have been around 30 percent two years ago and 15 percent last year, this year the company is simply hoping not to lose ground.
"We're calling flat the new growth," Faurot said.
Factoring in social media
While the evolution of social media--and the promotional and networking opportunities that services like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others give companies and individuals alike--may pose a threat to conferences that are not prepared to deal with it, it also presents a big advantage for those that are.
"In our experience, we've actually found that social media has increased (attendance at) events," Faurot said, "because people who are building relationships online, and people then have a reason to meet that person physically. It's very powerful. I think you just have to embrace it."
And that's where Demo may be in a good position, he added.
"People say, 'Of course, I can release my product at a number of events,' and there's a lot of alternatives to doing a launch at something like Demo," Faurot said. "But on the other hand, Demo is creating a time and place where people are focused on a category. The bet is you're going to amplify more (there) than if you just did your own announcement."
One phenomenon that has gotten a lot of notice in the last couple of years is what is called "lobbyconning," where people who haven't paid to get into a conference hang out in the lobbies at the event venues in order to network with the paying attendees.
But Faurot said that the activity of lobbyconning existed long before the term became well-known, and that, in fact, conference organizers who don't see such behavior are going to be unsuccessful.
"The worst thing for an event is when someone doesn't want to sneak into it," Faurot said.
One who isn't planning to sneak into Demo is BusinessWeek reporter Arik Hesseldahl, a longtime attendee of the conference. In a story he wrote earlier this month about Shipley's departure from the Demo directorship, Hesseldahl touted the value of the show.
"Shipley has run a great show, one that I have always considered a must-go," Hesseldahl wrote. "I quit attending most of the other tech conferences, but have always liked Demo because it is manageable, and because it's always interesting. Shipley has always picked a great crop of companies and I always leave Demo feeling optimistic about the future for tech companies and for the general state of innovation."
Of course, as a longtime attendee, Hesseldahl's enthusiasm for Demo isn't a surprise. But one person who gave the conference an endorsement was, perhaps, unexpected.
"I'll certainly go to (DemoFall)," said Arrington, who had stirred up a fair bit of controversy last year when he and Calacanis scheduled TechCrunch 50 at the same time as the 2008 edition of DemoFall and who, at the time, said, "Demo needs to die." "I think we're on different weeks this year. If we're invited, we'll go."
'Breathe' is a new style of entertainment that mixes film, alternate-reality games and Web 2.0 media into a single, multi-installment experience.
(Credit: Expanding Universe)If you think you know what a movie is, get ready to have your assumptions dashed to pieces.
That's because of Breathe, a multimedia, multipart film project that is in the works from the London-based social entertainment company, Expanding Universe.
Equal parts cinema, alternate-reality game (ARG), dance club, and social network, Breathe is Expanding Universe's attempt at both redefining existing entertainment genres and inventing entirely new ones.
At its most basic level, the project is a multistage, interactive murder mystery with a time line, said Yomi Ayeni, Expanding Universe's creative director.
But Breathe, which the company hopes will see the light of day some time in 2009, is expected to be much more.
To begin with, Ayeni explained by phone from London, the project opens as a traditional ARG that will be promoted by a series of dance club-oriented Web sites. The idea is that the sites will pull people in who are interested in finding out what's behind a series of mysterious and unusual deaths.
The sites will lead people to watching a 15-minute film which will delve into the police's murder investigation, introducing Breathe participants to the lead detective and letting viewers in, to some extent, on his crime-solving methods.
Where things take a turn for the innovative is what happens next.
What happens next
After watching the film installment and reading more about what's going on with the murders on the club music Web sites, some will begin to get invitations to exclusive nightclubs in the London area.
The idea with this, said Ayeni, is to remove people from their passive positions at their computers and bring them close to the action.
For those who avail themselves of the invites, they'll find themselves at nightclubs where they may end up mingling with various characters from the developing drama.
Some who attend will then find themselves offered further real-life experiences--and what happens after that leads to the second installment of the film.
What's interesting about Expanding Universe's technique is that they expect to turn the second film installment around in a week and incorporate footage shot in the nightclubs, meaning that participants may find themselves ensnared in the drama.
Then, as Breathe continues to evolve, as some people have become directly involved, and as more people spend time online reading about the drama, looking for clues to the developments and at the same time, enjoying what they're finding on the various dance club community Web sites, as well as a host of other online destinations, select participants will be presented with invitations to delve further in.
"And that is how we then move people on to the next stage," Ayeni said. "They become actual parts of the narrative itself, with interactions with people in the (fictional) drama."
"Set over a four-week period, viewers watch (four 15) minute shorts, and try to help Detective (John) Franks solve the case by working through puzzles, infiltrating the underground club scene, trying to locate the venue, and save the next victim from running out of air," an official Breathe summary explains. Using blogs, YouTube, GPS, telephone, secret meetings, IM, auditions, immersive role-play, cinema, and music, Breathe stands to be one of the most audacious multi-media experiences to leap from a cinema screen--'all you have to do is breathe...'"
How big can it get?
While the carrying out of the drama depends on the real-life participation of individuals, Ayeni said he thinks Breathe can scale to fairly large size.
That's in part because Expanding Universe is hoping to partner with nightclubs that can hold thousands of people, and also because the company hopes to carry out different versions of the project in different cities--each of which would be based on local DJs, local actors and other regional talent that could make each version similar, but would also vary enough to attract a new audience that would be kept in suspense, waiting for a unique cliffhanger ending.
Further, Ayeni said that at the conclusion of each city's edition, Expanding Universe could put out complete versions, perhaps on DVD, or online, that could both let everyone see how it played out, and also raise money.
It's not totally clear yet what the business model for Breathe is, though Ayeni suggested that it would bring in revenue through a series of sponsorships and partnerships, product placement deals and direct financing.
But with some time before Breathe becomes a reality, Expanding Universe still has time to work out the financial details.
In the interim, Ayeni and his partners are working on the structure of the project and hoping they can create something that turns entertainment--and the concept of how audiences interact with entertainment--on its head.
The murder mystery "has to become wrapped up in what is the alternate reality existence of the drama," Ayeni said. "We want the viewers and the people following this to step into the (installments), to be the bridge between what they're watching online and what they're watching in the cinema. We want people to step in and embody these experiences."
Creating new audiences
One person who thinks Expanding Universe could well succeed in its mission is Liz Rosenthal, the director of Power to the Pixel, a spin-off of the London Film Festival that focused on digital advances and resources in film.
Recently, Rosenthal invited Expanding Universe to make a presentation about Breathe to a gathering at Power of the Pixel and she said that the crowd of a couple of hundred movers and shakers in the media industry were impressed by what they saw.
"It created new audiences," she said of Breathe, "people watching things in new ways and in new places, and (it's) a way to reach audiences in more direct ways online."
Rosenthal said she thinks that Breathe utilizes one of the most impressive story-telling mechanisms she's seen, largely because the film itself isn't the starting point, but rather the story is the starting point.
"The way he's involving audiences is very extreme," she said of Ayeni. "He's involving audiences by getting them involved in a game (and that's) a totally new concept. (He's) one of the people at the forefront of this" new methodology.
In particular, Rosenthal said she appreciates the way Breathe is likely to get participants involved in shaping the media itself.
"They don't just sit back, they get involved," she said. "I think (Ayeni) is taking them a step further...They're kind of the protagonist."
O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly posted a blog Saturday with a set of answers from Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz to questions posed via Twitter by audience members at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote address on Friday morn.
(Credit: O'Reilly Media)Better late than never, as the saying goes.
On Saturday, O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly put up a blog entry with a series of answers from Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz that were in response to Twittered questions from the audience at their Friday morning keynote address at the Web 2.0 Expo.
The post was a result of O'Reilly's having offered the audience at the keynote address the ability to ask questions of Schwartz via Twitter, but subsequently not posing any of those questions.
Afterward, O'Reilly offered a mea culpa on CNET News.com and via his Twitter account, saying that he had inadvertently had his mobile phone set up to receive only Twitter posts from people he follows. That meant that he didn't see any of the audience's questions on his phone.
This is a nice resolution to the situation. In his blog post, he presented Schwartz with 11 questions that had come from Twitter, along with the Sun CEO's responses.
And in fact, this turned out to be a better outcome than if O'Reilly had taken a Twitter question or two because there were only a few minutes left in the keynote when he made the offer. This way, anyone interested in what Schwartz had to say got a much deeper set of responses from him.
So, kudos to O'Reilly for following up and to Schwartz for taking the extra time to respond to the questions. This all turned out to be a good example, after all, of incorporating the backchannel into conference proceedings and showed that everyone involved had the class and courtesy to take the situation seriously instead of just blowing it off to bad luck.
Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, gave his unique view on Web 2.0 and other issues at the Web 2.0 Expo Friday morning.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com)SAN FRANCISCO--If there's one person in the world of Web 2.0 technology--or tech in general--who hasn't yet been skewered by the infamous blogger Fake Steve Jobs, get ready: He's coming for you.
In a frenetic keynote address Friday morning at the Web 2.0 Expo here, Fake Steve--otherwise known as Forbes writer Dan Lyons--gave his unique take on the world of technology, the people who drive it, and the future of media.
Fake Steve began his talk with a discussion about the issues related to surviving backlash from audience members at conferences. I was rather pleased to see that as his prop, he used an article I'd written earlier this month on the subject.
Of course, as is his style, he lampooned the concepts in the story. He pointed out that in some ways, the article had focused on Web 2.0 Expo and so he said that based on the story, he had been fearing getting in front of 5,000 angry audience members ready to jump him if they didn't like what he had to say.
"I just want to apologize in advance for the next 25 minutes, for the 25 minutes you're never going to get back," Fake Steve/Lyons said. "Please don't Twitter attack me."
He also teased Social Media Club club founder Chris Heuer for comments he made to me for that story.
"Time is our most valuable asset, and if it's being wasted, we're not going to take it," Heuer had told me. "We want our time to be well-invested."
To Fake Steve, that comment was well worth a bit of his wit.
"If you're the founder of something called the Social Media club, you've got a lot of balls talking to me about wasting my time," said Fake Steve, adding that as he understood it, the club was for people to talk about what's being talked about on Facebook.
"It's like Webkinz for adults," Fake Steve said of Facebook. "It's the biggest waste of time ever invented."
He proceeded to explain how, over the course of the time that he's been writing his Fake Steve Jobs blog, he has pretty much killed his reputation with some of his antics. The point? That it doesn't really matter what people think of him or what he says.
"I have no reputation," he said.
Some examples of those antics: His portrayal of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as a baboon, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as a pimp, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz as a My Little Pony doll--"I did that before I knew he was (speaking at Web 2.0 directly) before me"--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer as Uncle Fester and, perhaps best of all, his take on Microsoft's shipping of Vista, which he had portrayed on the blog with a picture of an elephant defecating and the headline, "Vista drops tomorrow."
"So," he continued, "Oh God, I hope no one impugns my reputation. I'll never get that job at BusinessWeek."
He then continued with a history of how he came to start his blog. He explained that as he saw traditional media organizations getting their lunch eaten by bloggers, he wanted somehow to join the new generation of media players.
So he said that he asked Forbes.com, the Web venue of his employer, Forbes magazine, if he could start a blog. They said no, he reported.
Instead, he began his own blog, and began--with impersonating Steve Jobs as if he was really saying what he felt instead of being little more than a PR voice like many corporate bloggers--being Fake Steve Jobs.
Right away, he said, he attracted a large audience--90,000 unique monthly viewers after six months--and a worldwide manhunt to figure out who he was.
The best part of that, he said, was when Forbes' editor put out a bounty to uncover his identity.
Even better, Fake Steve said, was when he wrote to the editor offering to write the blog for Forbes.com.
"He wrote back, 'Oh, Fake Steve, you're a genius, we'd love to hire you,'" he said.
So, rather than carry on the subterfuge, he told Forbes that he was, in fact, Fake Steve Jobs, and thus began his official relationship as Fake Steve with his own employer.
Ultimately, though, he said that the best part of the experience of writing the blog has been that it has created what he called a "platform" for others to come and "perform" via the comments section.
He said there is one commenter, known as Fake Vladimir Putin, who appears nowhere else but in the Fake Steve Jobs blog comments section.
And that, he seemed to say, is really the essence of Web 2.0.
At least, it seemed to be. With Fake Steve Jobs, the snark level always makes it a little difficult to tell what the real message is.
O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly said he had his phone on the wrong Twitter setting to receive audience Twitter questions during his Web 2.0 Expo keynote interview with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
(Credit: Twitter)Update: This story now reflects Tim O'Reilly's mea culpa for not asking audience questions sent in via Twitter.
SAN FRANCISCO--After all the hooplah over interactivity--or lack thereof--during keynote speeches at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in March, I've been thinking a lot about how conferences can incorporate the backchannel.
That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see Tim O'Reilly, who runs O'Reilly Media, which is the co-organizer of the Web 2.0 Expo here, invite the audience for his keynote conversation with Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz to Twitter him questions to ask Schwartz.
He pointed out that the dynamic of the room didn't allow for audience members to stand at microphones to ask questions, so instead, he said, people could send him questions via his Twitter account (@timoreilly), which he would then be able to check on his mobile phone.
This can be a nice way to bring in the audience and it can showcase the ways that audience members can now interact with the people onstage at conferences and symposiums.
As I wrote in my earlier story, it is becoming increasingly clear that audiences want to be able to have a say in what is being discussed onstage, and technologies like Twitter, Meebo, instant message, and others make it more likely that not only will those in the audience be able to talk silently among themselves, but also to communicate with the speakers.
O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly encouraged the audience at his keynote interview with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz to Twitter him questions, but didn't follow up by asking any of them.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)But, sadly, O'Reilly never actually checked his phone to see if there were any Twittered questions from the audience--either those in the room or those following from outside--and therefore wasted this golden opportunity to bring the backchannel into the conversation.
There's nothing wrong, per se, with not incorporating the backchannel in such a keynote address, of course. At Web 2.0 Expo, the keynote addresses are shorter than at many conferences, and so I can easily see why keeping the discussion solely between those onstage makes perfect sense. And in fairness to him, there were really only a few minutes left in the time for the talk when he posed the opportunity.
But it still felt like a little bit of a slap in the face for O'Reilly to offer the audience the ability to Twitter questions and then not follow through.
Afterwards, I Twittered O'Reilly to ask him why he hadn't asked any of the questions I'm sure he must have gotten. He hasn't responded yet. But if I hear from him, I'll update this blog.
At just before 3 pm pacific Friday, O'Reilly Twittered publicly that he had accidentally had his cell phone set to the wrong Twitter setting and that it was only showing replies from Twitter users he was actively following.
It's good of him to address the issue and explain why he didn't follow through on his offer to the audience.
Flickr's The Commons project is an example of how the site's users can bring useful context to information from a single source, in this case the Library of Congress.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)SAN FRANCISCO--In return for the huge amount of work Flickr users do to tag photos on the popular photo-sharing site, they should get the benefit of the algorithms the service uses to bring meaning to the data.
That's how at least some at Flickr feel, according to Kakul Srivastava, the service's director of product management said in her talk, "The next generation of tagging: Searching and discovering a better user experience," at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday.
The idea behind that theory is that as Flickr users proactively add tags to countless millions of photos stored on the site, the service is able to draw some very specific conclusions about the behavior of those users and the things that are happening around them.
This graph shows how, over time, Flickr users have continued to add a tremendous number of tags to the photos on the service, a rate that continues to grow.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)And no wonder: The sheer amount of tags users have added over the four years the service has been operating is breathtaking: according to Srivastava, if you took the average text size of all the tags added to Flickr photos and laid them out, it would line the floors of 14 Wal-Marts.
"It's an incredible amount of content to parse, to reveal, and to take the meaning of," Srivastava said.
Unfortunately, I would have to say that the talk didn't deliver on its title: Srivastava didn't share anything particularly new with the audience, discussing mainly things that were probably already well-understood by most in the room.
Still, it was an interesting presentation, particularly because Srivastava talked about some of the ways that Flickr has evolved over the years, and what it's possible to learn based on how it's grown.
One of the most notable changes has been what she termed the increasing sophistication in the way Flickr users tag photos.
At first, she suggested, people were mainly tagging photos to add context about themselves. Then, gradually, they added context about other people, and then found ways to express shared experiences through their tags.
The best example of that--though more complex than what most people get involved in--is Flickr's The Commons project.
Within the first hour after the Library of Congress photos went up, Flickr users had added 150 tags to them. Within 24 hours, users added 11,000 tags.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)This is a project that launched in January with the U.S. Library of Congress as a pilot partner. The idea was that the Library of Congress provided a large collection of archival photos for the Flickr community to add tags to for additional context.
The reach of the Flickr community was immediately obvious, she suggested. The project launched with no tags, and within an hour, users had added 150 tags. Within three hours, the number was 767 and by the end of 24 hours, fully 11,000 tags.
Beyond that, Flickr users were able to add all kinds of contextual comments to the photos. Srivastava pointed to one such photo, a picture of a stream of dock workers leaving work at the end of the day, which had several user comments appended to it.
One of them was quite striking. The user noticed that all the African Americans in the photo were on one side of the stream, while the whites were on the other.
"Looks like 'quittin' time' was a segregated as the rest of life," the user commented.
Where the Flickr user community's participation in The Commons project is useful is in bringing personal context to images that previously had none.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)For Srivastava, that kind of comment is deeply important because it adds significant cultural meaning to a photo that otherwise was just another in a large collection.
Another notable emergent behavior on Flickr, she said, is the ability to determine when some sort of newsworthy event is going on, simply because of the use of a tag.
For example, she pointed out that traditionally, "Popemobile" wasn't a very common tag. But all of a sudden, she said, it was being used by a lot of people in the Washington, D.C., area, and by virtue of that, it was possible to see that something was going on around the Pope's recent visit to the United States.
In the end, Srivastava's talk didn't break new ground, but it did illustrate the ways that Flickr sees its users explaining the world around them through the use of tags. The concept itself may not be news, but tying it together and thinking about the many ways tagging on a site as popular as Flickr adds meaning is a worthy exercise.
It seems that the future of tech conferences is on a lot of people's minds these days.
On Friday, I ran a story here about how to survive and thrive in the so-called "Conference 2.0" era. The idea being that even as a multimedia backchannel made up of live, online chat on services like Twitter, IM, Meebo, and others proliferates at conferences and makes audience members feel empowered to demand more direct participation in keynotes and panel discussions, it doesn't have to be a disruptive force.
In fact, experts I talked to for the story told me there is plenty of opportunity for savvy conference organizers and speakers to find a way to leverage the backchannel in order to make things more interactive and progress toward more decorum than we've seen at some events recently.
Well, according to a blog post by Web 2.0 Expo co-chair Dave McClure, these topics were very much on his mind and the minds of several others at a dinner held Sunday evening in San Francisco. Among those who seemed to have been in attendance at the dinner were Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale.
(The Web 2.0 Expo is an official partner of CNET Networks' Webware 100 Awards; CNET publishes News.com.)
While a little jealous that I couldn't be at the dinner, I nonetheless am very interested in McClure's post, and I hope to be able to talk to him sometime this week and then elucidate further here.
Suffice it to say, some of the general topics under discussion as those at the dinner attempted to chew on how to make Conference 2.0 more useful for everyone involved included: "conf speakers / content don't meet expectations of audience," "sometimes speakers / organizers don't know / don't survey what audience wants to hear," "audience has an opinion, sometimes vocalizes it loudly (lately, via Twitter / Chat / Blogs)," "online tools may magnify negative opinion--does this create 'witchburning effect?,'" "sometimes you have to run the show and can't always pay attention to the backchannel," "how are we soliciting feedback on conf content / sessions BEFORE the event?" and many more.
Again, while I wasn't in the room, I can't say for sure, but it seems as though one topic on everyone's mind was how to deal with situations like the one that developed at the recent South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, when the audience at a keynote discussion there between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy became dissatisfied and extremely vocal with its displeasure.
So, at the dinner Sunday night, McClure seems to have posed the question of what expectations the audience at that South by Southwest keynote was led to have and, I surmise, how managing those expectations could have changed the eventual unpleasant outcome.
These issues are going to be increasingly important to iron out in the coming weeks and months as the backchannel evolves and as audiences become more and more used to having their say when they want to have it.
Many people think this is a bad thing, fearing that it turns over power to "the mob," but my sense is that a lot of very smart people in and out of the tech conference business feel that there are ways to manage this that can help everyone avoid repeats of what happen in Austin.
More to come. Stay tuned.
As someone who attends a fair number of conferences in many different cities, it's become painfully clear to me that, in general, the confabs' organizers have not yet climbed fully aboard the green train.
That is to say, conferences are often not the best examples of a focus on taking care of the environment.
For example, while I was told at the recent South by Southwest that its efforts to be green were improved from a year earlier, the endless sea of attendee bags on display--each with a small mountain of literature inside--was a visceral testament to the fact that it has a long way to go.
At South by Southwest 2008, there was a nearly endless sea of attendee bags, each of which was full of literature that would largely end up being tossed away.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)That's why I was pleased to see a post today on the official Web 2.0 Expo blog announcing that event's new attempts to address its impact on the environment.
Note: The Web 2.0 Expo is an official partner of CNET's Webware 100 Awards.
"It's a bit hard on the old conscience being employed in an industry (that) creates as much waste as the events industry," wrote Web 2.0 Expo general manager and co-chair Jennifer Pahlka. "Much is made of the carbon footprint of an event, but I'm well aware of an even more daunting measure, the ecological footprint, which looks at the sum total of resources used. Take a look at all that goes into producing an event the size of Web 2.0 Expo (including what our sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers bring) and you can either get depressed or try to tackle the problem. We're doing both... We have a long way to go, but I thought I'd share some of the changes we've implemented this year."
Among the changes Pahlka mentioned: Using 100 percent recycled materials for the program guide, attendee direct mail, attendee bag, and event signage; reducing the program guide by a third; recycling badges; providing water coolers and encouraging attendees to bring their own bottles; and more.
Of course, even Pahlka acknowledged that the efforts are only a start. And I do wonder how many attendees will bring their own bottles or recycle their program guides--another initiative.
"One thing I've become painfully aware of is that recycling is a good step, but not generating the waste in the first place is orders of magnitude more beneficial to the earth," Pahlka wrote. "That's why 'reduce' should always be the real goal. We're working with sponsors on further steps for reducing, and with our vendors on all three Rs. In some areas, we're aware we're taking risks. For instance, we've tried to limit the print run of the program guide this year, so there's a chance we'll run out if people don't follow our lead and leave their used guides for others to reuse. We hope you will all be tolerant of any errors we make in support of this effort."
Well, a start is a good thing, and I would love to see other confabs do the same thing. Or more.
Anecdotally, I heard that the Office 2.0 conference has put on a fully green event, though I couldn't find any direct evidence of that.
But if you've got good examples of conferences that are making impressive strides toward the greening of the industry, I'd like to hear about them. Please leave a comment or send me an email to daniel dot terdiman at cnet dot com.
Over the last few years, I have been to a whole lot of conferences. They've been in cities like Austin, Phoenix, San Diego, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and so on, and have covered any number of topics.
And over the years, I've started to come to the conclusion--as so many have before me--that the endless panels and keynotes are hardly worth the time it takes to sit through them. After all, how much value is there really in listening to six people talk over each other for 35 minutes?
In the end, as everyone knows, the true value in a conference is in the networking. And most of that gets done in the hallway anyway.
Well, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, there's a boom in people who have figured out that they don't need to pay the hefty attendance fees if all they want to do is swap business cards with or make pitches to the folks milling around talking outside ballrooms.
Why should they, since most times the event staff only check passes at the door to the panels or speeches.
There's even a verb for the scam: Lobbycon.
I think this is ingenious. Part of what makes a good entrepreneur, of course, is figuring out the most efficient way of getting something done, and lobbyconning certainly qualifies. If it costs you nothing to stand in the hallway at Web 2.0 and shmooze Craig Newmark or some Google exec, how efficient is that? Even if you have to fly to San Francisco, that's still a savings of $3,595 for a pass.
Some would say, of course, that lobbyconning is an iffy proposition, at best. But come on? How many of you have gone into a conference wearing someone else's badge? See? Most of your hands are up. So, what's the difference?
Frankly, I think there's way too many conferences in the first place, and part of the reason for that is that so many of the organizers have figured out that for a lot of people, there's an acute sense that if they miss this confernce or that symposium, they're harming their business prospects. Even if they've heard all the speeches before. Even if that acute sense is actually not at all accurate.
And besides, these conferences are often sold out, anyway.
Now, I know. It sounds like I'm promoting theft. But I'm not. It's not theft if the lobbyconners aren't going through the pass checks without a pass. It's just a clever way to peel off the benefits of those who did pay.
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