Apparently your opinion on what you’d like to see in a conference only matters if you buy a ticket to Gnomedex, which thank you for clarifying Chris Pirillo, because it’s comments like these that help turn me off to attending Gnomedex:

AGAIN, the opinions of registered Gnomedex attendees hold infinitely more weight with us than those who have (a) not signed up for Gnomedex, or (b) won’t sign up for Gnomedex, no matter what.

Guess the “no matter what” part saves me somewhat because I don’t rule out attending any conference by anybody. I do look for a few main components of a conference in order to sign up.

I’m burned out on 95% of the conferences being offered these days. There are too many of the same people — let’s call them conference whores — doing primarily the same things, forming in the same cliques, patting each other too much on the same backs. I can hang at my office, save money and time by covering the blogs, vlogs and podcasts of said events without having to go out and hear nice folks like Scoble for the umpteenth time brag about how many feeds he reads. We know Robert is a people magnet, now if only he would sit down, please be quiet, and let somebody else claim the microphone.

A friend who is part of organizing a conference asked me recently what type of conference I’d like to attend and I figured why not share this list below with others. Although Chris Pirillo might not value my opinion (as much?) because I’ve never attended Gnomedex (I have donated for the Gnomedex stream, however) — and again I still might attend a future conference he’s behind — conference planners might appreciate a list from a geek who has been around the web doing business for awhile, doesn’t suck from the teat of the corporate machine and has attended (and spoken at a small few) conferences over the years:

1. Avoid speakers who have spoken at more than one conference within the last couple years, unless they have something really new and fresh to offer the audience. There are a notable few exceptions like any of the Google founders, Bill Gates, Phil Harrison from Sony and so on, but try best to avoid the conference regulars. The reason we see a lot of the same people speaking is because the organizers want these big names to come and hope they’ll promote to their respective audiences. It’s an old, tired tactic that works.
2. Schedule people to speak that you don’t see speaking or attending many conferences. Don’t wait for them to submit proposals to you, conference planners, seek these people out. Invite them! People like Jon and Heather Armstrong, Wil Wheaton has crossover appeal as an actor (Stand by Me, STNG), writer and a geek. Shelley Powers is outspoken, heck I’d just like to see a picture of what Ms. Powers looks like (Flickr? Google, anyone?), somebody book her now. Dori Smith doesn’t speak very often and she’s got a ton of JavaScript knowledge. With the surge in AJAX popularity why isn’t she being booked to more conferences?
3. Provide tested, working broadband internet and a pre-established backchannel that can scale. Even though more folks have EV-DO (myself included recently) this has been a major drawback of almost every conference I’ve been to the last few years. If one drops a couple hundred dollars or more to a conference these days then they expect to get internet that works.
4. More audience interaction. The old formula of go, sit and listen just doesn’t work any more. Dave Winer has tried to push more audience participation and I think that’s a good idea (he’d be one of those people not to get speak, BTW). There is also something to the hall having the most interesting conversation. Maybe you get reporters and coverage of the halls outside the sessions? I remember demoing StumbleUpon way before it was as popular as it is now for Chris at a conference out in the hall of a Northern Voice conference. There are many other early adopter conversations happening in the halls and corridors of these conferences.
5. Don’t forget the virtual worlds. Consider simulcasting the event in Second Life (again, bandwidth needed) and let others have mini events with the stream and send some master list to the people on the stage to address. Dean Koontz did this last night with Bantom Books and it worked well. Since Pirillo doesn’t seem to like Second Life I doubt you’ll see anything like this at Gnomedex and it’s too bad. Chris, you (and others) should look at it again as having good potential to supplement your conference and make the sessions more interactive.
6. More Ice breakers to ease communication between attendees. We hear all the time how the reason to go to the conference is the crowd, the conversation, not necessarily the speakers. Assuming that’s true then why not do more to facillitate more conversation between attendees? Perhaps randomizing the list and selecting five or ten buddies to meet during the event. Meet them and get them to sign your nametag with a code or something and redeem at the end for a free t-shirt.

Time for me to use that dirty “T” word.

The most sensible use of Twitter I’ve heard thus far is for locating other attendees at conferences (thanks Eric). For those who can’t or don’t get into IRC, this is an additional benefit that should be utilyzed. Sounds like this happened at SXSW recently and that’s pretty exciting. When you’re at an event with hundreds of people, how to do you get involved? Some designated places to say “hey, I’m the dude with the brown hat by the ___” or “I’m wearing the green dress in the corner” could be valuable to attendees, especially first timers.

I’ll stop here, but I’m sure others can add to the list in the comments below. The truth is I’d like to go to more conferences, but would like to experience something fresh, exciting and new, whether it be a unique format, setting and/or an unusual but interesting collection of speakers and attendees.

Wait, the not enough female geeks thing
To briefly touch on the not enough females discussion, I think that’s bogus and yes, I’m a man so consider the source. Women have the same opportunity to sign up for these conferences as men. The same opportunity to adopt technology and blog, videoblog and podcast about the pros and cons. Maybe there is some discrimination in the selection of speakers, I don’t know because I’ve never been part of any committee that selects them, but I can say this: I’m personally most interested in hearing from people you don’t normally hear from: women, men, aliens, pet rocks, whatever.

The major disappointment I have in most conferences is a lack of creativity in the scheduled events.

What do you look for from a conference?
I like to meet new people as well as converse with past contacts, but as stated in the beginning of this post too many conferences are filled with basically the same group of people which actually detracts from making the overall event fresh and new. The same group over and over again isn’t likely to produce different results, are they? Perhaps it’s time to drop the whole tired conference versioning (conference 2.0, 3.0, 7.0, etc) and come up with a slogan instead of a number?

Geographically placed conferences like Gnomedex here in the Seattle area are most compelling of course (no travel time), but that’s not enough alone. I want to go there and feel like I’m going to get something additional out of the experience that doesn’t filter up through the exterior coverage from the attendees. More creativity!

You’ll note that I didn’t mention pricing anywhere in this post. Sang that sour note of conference pricing in the past. In this case I wanted to talk about value. Even free conferences aren’t worth attending if it wastes the most valuable resource we have: time. Conversely, a $1,000+ conference plus travel expenses could be worth it if the creativity factor and value is high.

What about you? What do you want to get out of conferences? Who would you like to hear speak? What would make you buy a ticket and attend? Can you add to my list above? Agree or disagree with something I’ve listed? The microphone is yours.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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