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on conference events

Seth Godin makes an interesting point in "saying thanks in a conference presentation." He writes,

Not only is this a total waste of time for most attendees, it doesn't even satisfy the core objective, which is thanking and rewarding the folks who helped. And it certainly doesn't encourage others to look forward to helping out.

It seems to me that conference organizers know almost nothing about organizing conferences; they seem to lose sight of any of the conference objectives. Conferences are usually designed around papers delivered by speakers yet they often don't provide printed proceedings and they typically do not provide support for the speaker--such as the ability to see the slides without turning around.

Maybe that's why conferences are often so expensive and yet so poorly attended.

Alas, organizers seem to focus mostly on the logistics and the exhibitions. They get everything in the right place at the right time and they make sure that the sellers have a place to hawk their wares. But in my experience, these organizers  do a poor-to-fair job of promoting the conference, do a poor job of supporting the speakers, and do a poor job of supporting those who attend.

Perhaps that's why "unconferences" were born. Rather than suffer a glitzy but empty traditional conference, people who are actually interested in the conference topics have started their own conferences. Many of you in the Austin area participated in the Austin ProductCamp last month. I'll be speaking on The Strategic Role of Product Management at Agile 2008 in Toronto next month.

If you are a conference organizer, actually watch the sessions at your next conference. You'll see dozens of ways to improve the experience for the speakers and attendees.

But Steve... who is the customer here?

Posted by David Lowe at 2008-07-18 12:15 PM
Hi Steve - hope you are well. You are saying here that conference organisers aren't tuned in to the needs of attendees & speakers. But the attendees are not the customer - the customer is the trade exhibitor. The job of the organiser is to get prospects in the door & walking past the trade displays. Once they have done that, the job is done. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

buying and using

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-07-18 12:45 PM
Ah, the old Golden Rule. "He who has the gold makes the rules." What you're talking about here is buying criteria. The conference organizer makes the money off the vendors, not the attendees. The buyers, not the users. But if the users don't return--and in this case, start their own competing conferences--then the buyers have won in the short-term only. I believe this is what has happened to trade shows. They obsessed over buyers instead of users, and now the buyers don't want anything to do with trade shows.

You can play the short-term game but you gotta live with long-term consequences.