Rethinking Conferences

I got an email talking about a big “post-telecomm” conference happening in about a month.  It’s one of those $1,500-$2,000 type conferences, on a subject I’m interested in and think I could learn a lot from, but it’s not exactly my niche.  As a result, it’s not a conference I can realistically justify and attend as a small business person, no matter how much I would love to meet people in this rhelm and understand what they’re talking about and concerned with, even as someone who just “consumes” these services.

Being a Podcamp organizer, I’ve become spoiled by the richness of information and perspectived that can be delivered at a cross-industry conference.  Podcamp participants are from all walks of life- business people, start-ups, bloggers, media creators, podcasters, journalists, students, educators, developers and hobbyists, to name just a few.  Podcamp is what I would call a post-demographic conference- we get people together with very little concern over the age, gender, profession or any other metric that places people in a box of any kind.  This means Podcamp may not be as focused as an industry conference, but it is democratic in the best sense, and I think we learn more from people not like us than we do from only talking to people like us, who view the world through a similar set of prisms.

Many industry conferences are, by nature, fish bowl events that may function like large support networks.  But I ask you- why are you only preaching to the choir?  Wouldn’t the time and money be well spent asking your customers and/or the public to come to some of your events?  Maybe have an open house day at the conference, so media, people interested in your show, etc. can come in and kick the tires and see what you’re about?  This might help your vendors and sponsors get some additional exposure.  You might find job prospects, students, and others willing to come, from the locality at least, to get a sense of whether this is something of value to them.

The big conferences are expensive to put on and expensive to attend.  The return on investment is usually getting to meet some of the big people in your field.  But wouldn’t the money also be well spent in extending the event to allow you to meet new people, potential customers, and others with new ideas and curiosity about what you do?

Granted, I am the sort of person who pays to take their kids to the Auto Show, Home Show and Flower Show in Philly.  Sometimes we go to the auto show to window shop for cars across dealerships.  We tend to go to the flower show for the displays, but also the great vendors where we buy heirloom seeds to start in our garden.  We like the Home Show, even when we don;t have any big projects planned, just to see what’s what and out of curiosity, along with my husband’s addiction to Lowe’s and Home Depot.

(We’ll sadly miss Home Depot’s Expo stores, by the way- they were like a home show in a store, but visiting one while we’re on vacation doesn’t do them much good.  There was never one near enough to use so that we could have become regular customers.)

I’d love to see some of these big conferences to do some more community outreach and education, drawing a wider audience into their circle, and helping others to understand what it is that they do.  Maybe I watched way too much Mr. Rogers growing up, and continue to find the behind-the-scenes world fascinating- from  Discovery Channel shows like How Stuff Works and Myth Busters to Food Network shows like How’d That Get on my Plate to Unwrapped- show me what you do and how you do it is endlessly fascinating to me.  It does demystify things, true, but it also helps me appreciate much more thoroughly everything that goes into the products I use, by knowing how much engineering, time, materials and care go into the things I might otherwise take for granted.

So for all you conference organizers out there- how can you make your event regular-person friendly?  What advantage might it have for you?  Can you extend your reach?  Can you do small events in the community- maybe have a “Kid’s day” like the NFL has at the NFL Experience with the Super Bowl, where kids from local schools can come find out about what makes you special?  Could a group of high school or college students come and find out more about you?  It may not be possible, but it might also grow an audience who might otherwise not engage at all with your conference and its large entrance fees in a tight economy.

Just a thought.  What do you think?  Reasonable?  Crazy?  Irrational?

Tags: conferences, demographics, discovery channel, food network, podcamp, post-demographics, verticals

Podcamp Revisited

I’m getting a reputation for being the Podcamp girl, having been to and organized many of these events to date.  I recently attended and presented at Podcamp Toronto, not only because I love the Canadian podcast community, but to see the innovative things they try out at this conference every year.  The beauty of Podcamp being an open source conference is that each one not only has its own local flavor, but each one brings a different innovation to the table.

Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, Mark Blevis and others have been talking about how we can adapt podcamp to meet the changing needs of the community, and how we are exploring “verticals” or topic-based podcamps, to theme an event, so to speak.  This was first tried out by Vivian Vasquez and Andy Bilodeau at Podcamp Edu, and we’re trying to expand the concept at Podcamp NYC 2.0 being held at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY on April 25 & 26th, 2008.

Last night, the Podcamp Toronto team did a great job talking with the community about the pros and cons of their event, and I think this is a key aspect of Podcamp to share with others- what went well, what didn’t, what’s worth repeating, what’s worth reworking.  To that end, I thought I’d blog about what I think are the most successful elements at Podcamps so far (that I know about- I am sure I am missing something), and I would love it if you would include your thoughts about what you’ve liked the most if you’ve been to an event, or what’s been the most disappointing, so we can work to tweek the model for the benefit of the whole community.

1. The Power of Coffee and Donuts: Jay Moonah and his team at Podcamp Toronto pioneered this simple thing and it really helps people start chatting before the sessions begin and people are milling about with registration.  Ideally, putting the coffee as close as possible to registration keeps everybody contained and talking, and this brings a nice social aspect to Podcamp while everyone is still searching for conciousness.  I like to think we did a great job getting the Starbucks “open bar” sponsored generously by Comcast Interactive at Podcamp Philly, but we were blessed by a Starbucks in the lobby of the building where we held the event, and really, I was copying Jay.

2. Tracking: I look at this like storytelling- somehow, stringing sessions together, in one room, so that from the beginning of the day to the end, you could stay in that room and get a whole complete picture of say, video podcasting and production.   It gets tricky scheduling sessions and working out the details, but when possible, making a room a “marketing room” or How To” room makes it easier to find what you are looking for if you are bouncing between sessions, or looking to learn something in more depth- you can construct a workshop-like experience between the offered sessions.  This puts a bit of a burden on the organizers to check the sessions list and maybe even asking some people who are coming to speak or facilitate a conversation, to fill in any missing spots, but I look at this as meeting the needs of attendees, not trying to turn Podcamp into a Conference.

3. Keeping People Social: Feeding a variant number of people at Podcamp can be tricky, especially when registered attendees versus the number who actually show up is rather unpredictable.  What seems to work is to let everyone grab lunch on their own with whomever they’ve met, but have an evening social gathering where everyone is invited, allowing people to really talk and meet in a way that may not have been possible during the day and in sessions.

There is a growing number of younger people starting to attend Podcamps, making it necessary to consider a non-bar venue to accommodate those under 21.  I think the best idea on this was floated last night by the Podcamp Toronto team-maybe scope out a group dinner place that will accommodate everyone if they wish, and let any pub-activities or concerts happen afterwards.

It’s clear people want a “structured” way to meet up with others in the evenings, at least for part of the time.

 4. Keeping People Together: This is a logistics thing as well.  There was some thought that the great Zero to Podcasting sessions at Podcamp Toronto isolated this track from the rest of the conference.  This may have been due to the fact that the room was on a separate floor from the bulk of the conference session rooms, but it also created a sense of community and comraderie maybe a bit separate from the rest of the conference.  I hope to have some hands-on, how-to sessions at Podcamp NYC, but I am looking at trying to make sure that these sessions are right next door to some more “advanced” sessions, so the newer people do not feel segmented out of the larger community, and the more experienced people also feel free to come, learn, explore and help mentor others.

5. The Mentor Room:  Tommy Vallier successfully pulled off a session called the Mentor Room, I suspect similar to what I tried to have happen at Podcamp Boston, which I wanted to call “Stump the Chumps” (after the segment on Car Talk from NPR) where veteran podcasters and new media folk would answer any question at all from the audience, brainstorming solutions for them on the spot.  I think we’re going to see if we can’do this for Podcamp NYC, both for a longer period of time, and to help understand the problems and confusion some people face when they decide to give podcasting. video, or new media a try.  I think this will serve to make veterans better teachers, as well as answering the very real and frustrating problems people face when confronted with “all this web stuff”.

6. Hyper-local:  I think any Podcamp should be about the local community.  It should be about bringing local people to your event,  and growing the community from there, rather than expecting the handful of visible “regulars” to attend every podcamp. For Podcamp Philly, this meant involving the local tourism folks, having events in different parts of town, so people got to see Philly as well as the conference, and developing a local sponsor base.

Why?

I met Linda Mills at Podcamp Toronto- she lives about 15 miles from my home, if that.  I met many more people from Philly at the originial Podcamp Boston than I had met around Philly proper. It is absurd that I had to go to another country to meet one of my neighbors with similar interests, or drive 500 miles or more to meet my local folks.  Podcamp Philly and BlogPhiladelphia were events about bringing our community together, and I think it succeeded on many of those metrics.

So these are a few of the things I think help make Podcamps special and worth-while events to hold in your town or area.  But what do you think?  What makes Podcamp special and worthwhile to attend?  What works well for you and what doesn’t?  We can only improve if you share your thoughts and we make Podcamp what it has always strived to be- a community based new media conference- about the people even more than the cool tech tools.

Tags: best practices, podcamp, verticals