Growing evidence points to both the mounting challenges facing the conference business right now, and the fact that somewhere within those challenges lurk great opportunities.
Consider:
1. The recent 4A’s conference (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Conference, as reported by Michael Bush in Ad Age, came up short both in numbers of delegates (off some 30 or 40%+),and in the delivery of practical solutions the delegates were looking for.
2. There are several amazing blog posts and a vibrant tweetstream about the "New Models for Old Publishers" Panel at SXSW Interactive this week. I highly recommend searching through this stream from Sunday the 15th during the panel, either at #sxswbp or through a site like icerocket.com (which I prefer). Either way, you’ll find what Michael Tobis, one of the many bloggers to report on the panel described as… "Most of the panel presentation was irrelevant (and rather pointless) exposition on the part of the panelists… Why? Because almost everybody in the audience was on a pre-announced twitter channel #sxswbp. And by the time anybody in the crowd got to ask anything, most of the crowd was in a very collective and connected foul mood… the event was ironic because it was ultimately not about long form writing at all but about the very short form, i.e., the 140 or fewer characters in a Twitter message. For all I know it was a watershed event in the history of instant messaging. It certainly was a revelation for me, and that's why I'm glad I was there. Twitter is nowhere near as silly an idea as it appears at first glance."
A similar reaction from Yen was... "On the one hand, the conversation on Twitter was related (and a reaction) to the offline panel discussion; on the other, it took place without the involvement of the panelists—the Web 2.0 equivalent of passing notes behind the teacher’s back. Welcome to the New Think."
Seth Godin’s challenge to the community of event producers gets more relevant with each passing week. The current economy paired with the richness of what is available online continues to raise the bar.
The NY Times report the day after SXSW Interactive sums up what event producers have to compete with: "It was obvious after a few days here that the people formerly known as the audience were too busy making content to consume much of it, unless it came from their friends. The medium is not the message; the messages are the media.”
How does that sentiment jive with your experience? What live conference or session have you been to lately that was really worth it?
Comments