The "E3 shuts down" news (that's the 60,000 person gaming show saying that they're "downsizing" becasue their 4 major sponsors pulled out) has me thinking more and more about conferences - tech conferences, specifically.
A couple of thoughts:
1. I believe that tech conferences are ahead of the broader curve of "conferences."
2. Traditionally, the value conferences brought was a centralized point for education surrounding products and solutions. This "product education" sets up the "buyer-seller" model of conferences -- namely, you sell booths to vendors (sellers) and then the sales leads (buyers) show up.
3. The internet has disintermediated a lot of the "product education" angle of conferences. This means that conferences *must* provide value (information, networking, leads, buzz, something) in a different way.
4. A lot of "tech shows" have turned into a gathering of the "innovative thinkers" in the tech community. I *love* these shows, but there's one problem -- you only need a couple of them and then you're saturated. Otherwise, you end up seeing the same ole speakers all of the time.
5. Is the "big tech conference" dead (as Robert Scoble recently alleged)? That depends on what you mean by "big"? Tech conferences *over* 5000 people only very rarely make sense. And I mean *rarely.*
6. All of that means that if you're running tech conferences, you have to be very clear about what you're up to (objective wise -- and now I'll use Digital ID World to illustrate):
A) We started Digital ID World for the *community* (that didn't exist when we started it). That community has 2 primary parties *at this point* (that can change rapidly) -- Enterprise IT folks and the "user-centric" identity community. Think of those two groups as the non-exclusive poles that we rotate around, hoping to foster collaboration and cross-pollination along the way.
B) The value of the show comes from the community. Here I am speaking about what is on stage -- and we've been adamant about this from day one -- value comes from the community telling their stories. And I'm not talking about vendors. Real-world deployments, real-world problems, real-world solutions (or solutions in progress) -- *that's* the value you can't find elsewhere, and its the single biggest thing that distinguishes Digital ID World from other shows.
C) If you look at our schedule, you'll see a continuum -- stuff "being done" is being presented by enterprises, and the only way vendors end up on stage is on the "emerging topic" (ie, not a lot of customers yet) side of things. That focus results in 50+ enterprises on stage.
Have I slipped into infomercial? I hope not because we really do care deeply about this stuff. We think long and hard about how to provide the best thing running -- and I think we get better every year.
And *all of that* is about understanding what's happening to conferences.
Posted by ejnorlin at August 2, 2006 03:55 AM