DISQUS

Chris-

great post. As a guy who's A) been in the conference industry for 10yrs and B) runs Defrag (www.defragcon.com) and Glue (www.gluecon.com), I'd say that social media MUST be embraced by conference organizers. When "the internet" hit, conference organizers tried to shut that down as well - and, of course, failed miserably.

Conference organizers should NEVER prevent any attendee from blogging, tweeting, broadcasting (via video, audio, whatever) the event.

The bottom line is that events must prove their worth based on the community that gathers around them, the "brainshare"/interactive spaces they provide, and the value that all parties (attendees, speakers, sponsors) get from them. Social media is yet another way to add value.

Doing so is what allowed Defrag to have attendees say things like

“There are two big things that make a conference a winner: (1) the quality of people, and (2) the energy they bring. Defrag hits it out of the park on both. Will definitely be back!”

“I've lost count of how many people I met at Defrag have helped make Mailana a reality!”

“I made amazing relationships at defrag and ignited existing ones. I'm indebted to you for that.”

http://defragcon.com/2009/DEFRAG09-Why.htm

again - great stuff....maybe we'll see you at Defrag ;-)
ejn

www.defragcon.com

Glad you got to do that, Robert. I'm in the tech world now, but I was in the Navy - and still have friends doing dangerous things. People truly don't understand how hard sailors (and marines and soldiers and airmen/women) lives can be until they see it up close and personal. Kudos to the USN for doing this!

Thanks Fred!

I'm not an expo fan (never have been, really) -- and of the "high priced" conference type of things, I've ever attended, the only one that was really worthwhile was PC Forum (and that was because of Esther).

We try to make Defrag (www.defragcon.com) and Glue (www.gluecon.com) special -- and I hope that shows.

It would, of course, be great to see you there ;-)

Rackspace gaining ground clearly has nothing to do w/ Scoble and everything to do w/ the fact that they decided to sponsor the Glue conference (www.gluecon.com) ;-)

Hey albert - one of the things that really seems to be resonating with people re: Glue (www.gluecon.com) is that we just ASSUME the "web as platform" -- ie, we skip the "cloud argument" and move right to the issues.

....and there are plenty of them ;-)
ejn

Fred- I run Defrag (www.defragcon.com) and Glue (www.gluecon.com). Defrag has had twitter at it since inception, and glue will as well when we launch in May.

I cannot emphasize enough how valuable twitter is for a conference organizer. It has helped with sponsorship sales, attendee registrations, and (as you point out) content at the event.

Beyond Twitter, I've been pushing people to use Eventvue (www.eventvue.com) as well. Eventuve meta-aggregates the majority of our activity streams and republishes it back out onto a twitter account (ie, it's like all attendees get all of their content aggregated into one stream).....ie, it's like twitter on steroids. ;-)

Any event organizer NOT using twitter is just simply missing out.

okay, so it's not in the valley - but i'm seeing lots of optimism around Gluecon (www.gluecon.com) -- sponsorships, registrations, and general excitement.

hope to see you there! ;-)

Robert-
2 cents on the black jan doom and gloom and innovation:
http://gluecon.ipower.com/blog/?p=20

wanna come to Glue? it'd be great to get you out to the boulder-denver tech corridor...

hey micah-
i'd recommend you get into places like Ad:Tech or the NAB show -- take the message to the publishers. ;-)

ejn

2 cents:
http://gluecon.ipower.com/blog/?p=17

great minds name alike ;-)

www.gluecon.com

(and albert's involved)

my thoughts on this:

http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=287

Now is when real innovators and leaders whip ass. period.

Howard-
awesome post. something i'm pounding on for Defrag. lots of startups there will need to alter their "messaging" to survive - but the opportunity is so there. i get more excited by this "downturn" (ie, true opportunity) every SINGLE day.

looking fwd to seeing you there.

hey robert- we're focused on "email as a problem" at defrag this year (chris wand from foundry group really brought this to my attention). We've got a session entitled "fixing foundational info channels" - which points to folks like ClearContext, Mailana, AideRSS, and Timebridge as companies working in the email/calendaring/rss "fixing" space.

http://www.defragcon.com/2008/DEFRAG08Agenda.html

we've also got an invite only "next gen email" dinner happening the night before the conference starts.

it's a big, juicy, wonderful problem that will be a major driver during the downturn. hope you can join us.
ejn

hey jake- actually, the avg high temp in November in Denver is 54 -- and all defrag attendees get an awesome fleece to help stay warm. Trust me, you're gonna love it. ;-)

ejn
Defrag organizer
www.defragcon.com

Robert-
I'm not afraid. As brad feld says "fear is the mindkiller" - i totally agree. Great innovation comes from periods like *this*, not the whole "web 2.0" wave.

My thoughts here: http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=283

Great thoughts from Brad here: http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2008/10/ok_en...

hope to see you at Defrag
ejn

some of my ruminations on a sunday morn:

http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=283

howard-

ruminating on your post -

http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=283

one last note: me posting this will, of course (via murphy's law), ensure that wifi goes down at Defrag ;-)

hey folks- i run defrag (www.defragcon.com), and wifi isn't really a mystery or even all that hard. you have to:

a) sign a contract w/ a location that will let you bring in outside vendors (not hard)
b) use Swisscomm (they're 2x expensive, but actually get it right)
c) ask them for only 25 connections per access point - and FLOOD the place with access points.
d) if you're doing tons of streaming video - adjust accordingly.

ejn

Robert-

(full disclosure: Chris Shipley is an advisor to Defrag)

The bit in your post about how PR folks are "fearing" Arrington speaks to a phenomenon that's something beyond distasteful. It takes the whole "journalism v. bloggers" meme and flips it on its head -- by showing the worst actions that the blogosphere can offer (if what you imply is actually happening).

As for the DEMO v. TC50 stuff: I've asked tons of folks - and have found that outside of the echo chamber that is the Valley, most folks are picking DEMO. In fact, I did a twitpoll about which one would be around in 4 years, and 100% of respondents picked DEMO.

I'm not sure what that all means, but I don't buy into the "DEMO is going down" thinking that's going around. Chris has been doing this for too long, and is too good.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of people have been turned off by the "demo must die" stuff that Mike said, along w/ a lot of jason's "payola" comments. I think they would've been better off to say nothing, and just go about building their conference (which obviously has value).

People would really rather see the industry collaborating around helping startups versus a whole conference started because it wants to "destroy" something else.

What's the upshot of it all? I'm actually getting companies approaching me that have decided they'd rather launch at Defrag versus getting "lost in the noise" that will be the endless articles of "demo v. tc50" that week (which will result in no one getting the launch they want).

www.defragcon.com

not to engage in horn-tooting, but I'm exceedingly happy that Ismael took my advice last year and realized that Swisscom is the key to conference wifi success.

any tech conference w/ bad wifi simply needs to step up and spend the money....

...and if you think your startup is relevant to the Defrag crowd - pls be in touch (enorlin AT mac.com)

www.defragcon.com

gitmo? ( i kid! - kinda)

any chance we get you back to the denver/boulder area to hang w/ kedrosky, feld, et al for Defrag?

hey robert-

i started to blog about this a bit yesterday (more under the theme of not putting the same people on stage at conferences like Defrag):

http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=244

let's catch up soon!
ejn