Something I don't really 'get' is the whole notion of a 'conference'. At least, not for technical people. I want people to comment to try and convince me otherwise. But first, my argument.
I attended a lot of conferences in the '90s and they were on all sorts of topics, but mostly Internet or technology related. They seemed to be an opportunity for vendors and business-minds to hook up and where vendors could demonstrate their new products. Nothing mind blowing and, well, pretty boring.
In recent years the concept of having conferences for technical people only has cropped up. Essentially you gather a bunch of smart people together and they listen to some presentations, chat amongst themselves, have a 'backchannel' where they can talk behind the scenes, and so forth. The thing is.. how is this any better than having an IRC channel and a bunch of blog posts or video files, really? I attended the Future of Web Apps summit a few months ago, and it would have been just as interesting if the presentations were streamed over the net by each presenter respectively, and the backchannel was on a public IRC channel anyway. Why don't we have more 'conferences' where the best and brightest simply meet up on IRC, do streaming video presentations, and tons of blog posts, and generally get on with talking about their craft? The need to 'press the flesh' seems meaningless when it comes to technology. We live online, so why not stay there? It's cheap, it's accurate, and I can listen to 50 people talking in an IRC channel and get a wider breadth of knowledge than the 5 usually vapid presenters at a 'real' conference.
As it happens, podcasting expert Penny Haynes had an idea to start a virtual podcasting expo. She invited FeedDigest to take part, but it's not quite the time for us. The idea looks great though, and it'll be interesting to see how this idea pans out. I think virtual conferences won't wipe out real conferences, but hopefully they'll take over the areas it makes sense to keep things online rather than force everyone to travel hundreds of miles to hear presentations about things they already know.
On a tangential topic, Dave Winer talks about unconferences, 'conferences' where the attendees become the presenters. He bases his thoughts on a supposed 'fundamental law' of conferences which is 'The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.' This is a great rationale for online conferences and online chatrooms to replace offline panels.
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I agree with most of your comments. The reason I didn't go to the Carson Workshop as that it seemed far too much like a school lecture for me. I just waited for the groups notes to come online and blog reports. I'm sure there was a few things I missed, but I didn't really get that impression.
However, the concept of a virtual conference doesn't work too well for me - I know that I'd be far too easily distracted. Convincing the wife that I was really working while spending the weekend on IRC would be tough too :)
For me, the real meat of a conference happens on on the backchannel and after the presentations. Sure, the backchannel could happen anywhere, but you can't beat the converstaion between talks and afterwards. Especially with a beer in hand. The best conference talks are the ones that you're still talking about at 2am the next morning (hopefully with the speaker, and hopefully after a few glasses of wine).
I don't go to a conference to be lectured to, I go to be inspired and to meet great people. That's the reason I'm going to Reboot again this year. I can honestly say I have never been to a more insipring, though provoking and (most importantly) fun conference!
Just my 2c :)
Posted by: Alan at April 9, 2006 08:03 PMReturn to the homepage.
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