Good “observation piece” as my friend darkmoon puts it who is one of the people behind the ConvergeSouth conference that just finished in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’ve never traveled to the states southeast of Chicago, IL so my comments at least in part in this post are based on looking at how the southern states vote historically in elections: predominantly red (Republican, 2004 election results below).

This logically suggests to me if/when I visit these places I’ll encounter a higher percentage of conservative-leaning people than liberals which are everywhere in this neck of the woods (greater Seattle area). Understood. If I travel to France, I’m probably going to run into a higher percentage of French speaking people. Travel to Mexico and Spanish speaking people will be in higher numbers. Got it.

Darkmoon writes:

Year after year, we always do damage control with people that diss the conference. Usually they’re from people that didn’t go to the conference but insist that there’s some unsaid political agenda. We invite people that use the technology to push their voice and thus fulfilling the vision of the conference. Yet somehow or another, people keep coming back to how it’s more left… and more progressive.. yadda yadda.

As someone who has criticized conferences in the past that I haven’t attended — for lack of perceived value, never for political reasons — I find this a curious subject. We all attend conferences for our own reasons expecting to get something out of them. Maybe it’s more business contacts, more contacts period. It certainly isn’t the WiFi at conferences, because most suck (hint: always bring your own EVDO). In my experience the hallways and networking are vastly more valuable than listening to most speakers, panels and breakout events.

But politics? Really?

Who goes to technical conferences with political agendas? Why? Who started this trend? Was it Chris Pirillo by inviting John Edwards to speak at his annual Gnomedex event? Why didn’t he invite a Republican to counter this? I’m guessing he didn’t have any Republicans who wanted to come? I just pinged him on Skype and asked if any Republicans ever approached him to speak at a tech conference? Maybe he’ll respond below, because he didn’t reply in time before this went to publish. (Update 1:19pm PST: Chris responded — only Edwards)

Recently Republican candidate Mitt Romney responded first to Techcrunch about doing a podcast interview. There were 76 comments, some of them containing some very good possible questions. That seems like a better forum to discuss tech-related political concerns than at a tech conference.

If I want to go to a political event, I’ll go to a rally not a tech conference. I’ll spend time at political websites and interacting at political forums, which is what I’ve been doing the last couple weeks. I’m not saying some new, interesting, cool technology behind a political site shouldn’t be covered at a tech conference, but I don’t go to a tech conference to get the soft or hard sell for a political party or individual candidate, do you?

According to darkmoon’s post, apparently some do.

At least some are very concerned about how partisan a conference is or isn’t and want to voice their frustration about it after the event has ended. When he first mentioned this to me in IRC, I was kind of surprised this was a big deal. Those who are freaking out over partisanship at tech conference planners should keep staying home and letting others go. Or form your own political conference with tech as a secondary focus maybe? Those who are planning TECH conferences should try their best, and darkmoon contends they do, to keep these TECH conferences as non-partisan as possible.

Every conference has their conflicts. As somebody who once was part of a conference that focused on the adult industry, the big deal there was webmistresses (female webmasters) not wanting to be treated like models (content). At those conferences the political concerns centered around 2257 laws. Understandably each type of conference has hot button issues. Easiest way to avoid them? Just tell people to check their hangups at the door or don’t come. And if they can’t follow these rules during the conference politely show them the door.

As for the people who bitch and moan that they aren’t coming? Listen, thank them for the feedback and try to integrate these suggestions into next year’s event if they are the prospective audience you wish to attend.

• Challenging conference speakers, Pirillo shows his smarts with “Gnomdex” typo
• Different map strokes from different folks, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
• Yahoo Sports inks NFL streaming deal for outside North America
• First retail Xbox 360 eyewitness acccount: sold out!
• Do you go to conferences for networking or to learn something?
• List of web-related conferences for 2006