I had been eye-balling An Event Apart in Minneapolis for a few months as a cool conference to go to. It finally sold out, saving me from actually having to make a decision. But I still looked over the agenda.
And it suddenly occurred to me what really kept me from pulling the trigger. It wasn’t the price (over $1,000) or the travel costs, but the long speeches and the thought of sitting through Powerpoint presentations, knowing I would probably not learn anything new. No offense to Zeldman, he is one of my heros.
I think it may be time to start re-thinking conferences. Think about how we work every day. Most of us do in short bursts; twitter, email, multiple projects going on, snippets of information coming in through cable news. We can Google solutions to design or software problems on the fly from our desks. So, why are conferences structured as long keynote speeches and presentations? Why are they not bursty?
Here would be a cool thing. What if each presenter was tasked with giving a ten minute sales pitch for his/her content for the first half of the day. Then, they would retire into a group room where they could conduct a workshop Socrates style with more of a one-on-one with the attendees who were intrigued enough by the pitch to participate? Then, instead of giving a canned presentation, the “expert” could drop anything the ad hoc audience already knows and explore that which they don’t.
It would take more of an effort by speakers to be involved in the conference and some traditionalists may not want to participate to this level of personal engagement. For me, it would make that conference worthwhile.
Just thinking out loud.
PS I think I’ll go to 140conf in Detroit Oct 20, 2010. It appears this format is about as close as any get to different.
