SICK of Conference Comparisons
Stop it! I don’t know why, but this shit really hit a sore spot with me.
What I’m talking about is all the comparing and bitching about “real” conferences and PodCamps. Are they different? Yes! Are they the same in some ways? YES!
There is room for regular conference, un-conferences and everything in between. I think it’s pointless and doesn’t help anyone to start comparing them and choosing sides. It just doesn’t make sense and it’s a waste of everyone’s energy to do so.
Yeah, I’m wasting some energy typing this right now before even having some coffee, but it really rubbed me the wrong way.
Some key points as I see it:
- Many people can’t pay to travel the globe and paying for conferences
- Many people can only attend conferences that are near to them so the more of them the more chances someone can go
- We all have to make decisions which conferences we go to. But, who cares the why and the how someone makes that decision. The key is that THEY made it.
- The community is big enough for all of us and all the conferences (hmm….maybe I need to add a slide now)
I’m at PodCamp NYC and speaking as well. I’m going to be at the PME and speaking there too. There will be other conferences of both types in between now and then.
The New Media Playground is big enough for all of us to play on. No bullies allowed. So grab a swing and have some fun and let’s work together to continue forward progress.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:22 am |
Go to the conference or meetup that best suits your needs. That’s the most important thing. If you don’t like a conference - don’t go to it. If you can’t afford it, ask for help. Ask someone to sponsor you.
And if all else fails, do what Chris Brogan and I did - make your own conference. PodCamp was only really created SEVEN MONTHS AGO, when you think about it. While the PodCamp name is taken, there’s no reason you can’t create your own. Justin Kownacki is doing that with BootCamp Pittsburgh.
Bottom line: you’re not allowed to bitch about conferences you don’t like any more. YOU have the power to make your own.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:22 am |
Amen Brother!
Old Media is exclusive and targeted by definition… New Media is all about content, community, accesability, and *variety*.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:43 am |
You said it mate!
There seems to be a plethora of new media conferences in the US, whereas in Australia.. I haven’t heard of any.
I love that you mentioned ‘no bullies allowed’!
There have been confrontations the podcasting/blogging community (some people just can’t help themselves) but I find friendships made and a great sense of community far outweighs the ‘bullies’.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:47 am |
It’s an adjustment time for everyone. Just as journalists and radio personalities need to come to grips with the fact that bloggers and podcasters are “competitors” for people’s time, “traditional” conference organizers need now to deal with the fact that there are new kids on the block.
Where there is change, there will be people bitching. My advice to attendees: Find the event that suits you, and don’t be so sure you wouldn’t get something out of the other ones too.. Keep an open mind - it’s too early in this game to to close doors.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:12 am |
What I’ve realized is that it isn’t that I don’t like “realâ€? conferences, I don’t like “realâ€? conferences that have panels and round tables that are not well run.
At SXSW there were a few panels that were amazing. In each case, they had interesting people who had a conversation about a topic. There were no long introductions and no prepared questions and answers. Just a lot of ‘inside baseball’ talk about what they were doing and how they did it. Really valuable and exciting.
If you’ve got good moderators, panelists, and topics, panels can still be great.
Presentations can also be great if you’ve got someone up there telling a story and not reading through a stack of PowerPoint slides with a lot of words on them.
The thing I liked about PodCamp Boston, was that there were lots of different activities going on. Panels, presentations, workshops, music! You could easily leave a session you didn’t like and go to another… There was also a lot of interactivity in the session that I chose to attend. A lot of back and forth, questions and content coming from the room and not just the speaker…
Fun times…
April 6th, 2007 at 9:13 am |
I didn’t realize there was so much bitchtasticness in the Conference Chatter World about conferences vs. un-conferences. I s’pose, coming from the library world, a conference is a conference is a conference, but there isn’t much experience in the library world with the un-conference concept, so there’s not much for folks in the library world to complain *about*.
I myself want to see more un-conferences in the library world, especially considering that librarians love conferences but hate/can’t afford the costs (I was contemplating organizing a LibCamp Boston at some point, and would *definitely* need help with how to do that). My greatest concern is that the library world may not *get* it, but there’s no telling unless I try. Color me a risk taker in a risk-averse profession. ;D
If there are ppl out there who think un-conferences aren’t “real” on some level, they need to get over themselves. We live in an age of varying methods and levels of communication, and, in my mind, the un-conference is a brilliant innovation that can fluidly move and evolve with the changes in communication.
Sho nuff.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:24 am |
The New Media Playground is big enough for all of us to play on. No bullies allowed. So grab a swing and have some fun and let’s work together to continue forward progress.
Except when you propose an event and get comments that you may be competing against another proposed event.
And I’m slightly concerned with the thought that certain unconference prefixes are considered ‘taken’.
Umm… looks like I’ one of the people bitching…
- Neil.
April 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm |
Are you really surprised by this, though? This has been going on since “new media” started to gain any traction. It wasn’t that long ago that the whole PME-Podshow hubbub stirred up a whole nest full of hornets, remember? The niche is just small enough that people have to and will continue to stomp over others in order to get a few discarded crumbs off the pie crusts of attention.
Whether it’s podcasting conferences, music conferences, blogging conferences or conferences on modern basket weaving, we haven’t steered too far away from the old late 1980’s and early 1990’s Usenet flame wars, only now we use words like “associations” and “networks” and “unconferences” to mask the flames.
It’s only going to get worse in the future, I’m afraid. You say “The New Media Playground is big enough for all of us to play on” and I must respectfully disagree. “Big Media” and the so-called A-Listers have already either claimed their stakes in social media worlds or can easily buy their way into catching up. That leaves the rest of us fighting for the scale sheddings off the long tail and will lead to more things like this.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:03 am |
Access has always been and will always be an issue with any conference event or otherwise. My take…I like the differences offered by each venue and I think the differences are healthy. As in listening to podcasts the beauty is we now are growing more choices for participation and attendance, and in different spaces and places.
Personally, what I look for is if after an event I come out feeling as though I can participate differently in the community from having met some new folks, taking away some new ideas, making some new connections, understanding something that didn’t previously make sense and so forth…