April 15, 2008
Unconferences: You Need To Man Up
Chris Brogran and Christopher S. Penn offer their takes here and here respectively as to why PodCamp Boston 3 is charging $50 this year per attendee. While that is certainly far more reasonable than paying $1895 for the Canadian Marketing Association’s annual convention and trade show, I think that the gateway fee will be of hinderance to the younger generation.
Conferences as we know are networking vehicles. But let’s for a second accept that we are really attending to learn about new industry trends so that we can make our corporations more profitable. *cough* Shmooze. *cough* Steak and drinks on the expense accounts. *cough*
Where was I?
I find PodCamp’s to be far more populist in nature where networking is certainly of value but it seems to me that people are more jazzed about being self-empowered, they’re jazzed about the technology, and they want to be cutting edge leaders whereas let’s face it; corporate conferences are for wheeling and dealing.
This brings me to David Armano’s “We Are All ‘Internet Dating’” post from yesterday. It’s a bit creepy to me and possibly the reason why I neglect to attend most ad-hoc gatherings. This may very well be the Achilles’ heel to my survival in marketing / social media but I am comfortable in taking the risk.
As a young go-getter, I grew up on the net thanks to a parent with an old school laptop and 14.4 modem connection. The 90s were lovely. Remember then ya’ll? Newsgroups (ie the original RSS)… IRC channels (yeah, we actually used to chat back then instead of throwing text darts via Twitter)… community-driven message boards (as opposed to personal blogs). The point is that I shook all of my “sociality” back then in order to glue myself to CNN for 12-hours per day to learn about stock markets, the internet boom, and other matters of the free market. This filtered view of the global trends, cash, and movers and shakers enthralled me.
I’ll tell you something you already know: the free market isn’t anything like social media/new media. And most the fun we all have on Facebook and Twitter and GoBoDoWee–future “hit” social network I’m sure–is mainly to be connected to the world on a philosophical level. We all know who our real friends are. We also know who we respect most within the context of business. And most importantly we all know how to separate business and pleasure. (Or do we now?)
My arching point coming back to the formerly-free / now $50 PodCamp unconference experience versus the $1895 corporate conference model is that I don’t particularly care for either model. One now has a cost, the other is too costly. Neither have comfortable chairs. Conferences are about who you know (or who you want to get to know) and to that there is a cost to pay. The X factor is star power where silly folks like me actually ponder dropping two grand on seeing almighty headliners like Seth Godin and Avinash Kaushik. Meanwhile, while surely worth the expense, I would think it more difficult to convince the average PodCamp / podcasting fan to attend with such a fee because it becomes a business transaction rather than a free-spirited community event (such with IRC and message boards of yore).
I hope I’m wrong. But I can’t yet find the logic in wanting to pay $1895 when I could be paying $50 for what could be a more beneficial experience. At the end of the day and money aside, I want to be in the company of leaders and policy makers. I’ve leveraged social media in order to learn from such leaders and I hope to repay it in kind by helping others along my path.
Just like one social network might be similar to another, all conferences have similar aims whether it be advancement of a cause, activism, networking, or otherwise. But are Geek Dinners worth attending? Are unconferences worth it? Who cares. Just attend a couple and you’ll find out. (And yes they are worth it BTW). My point is that if unconference organizers aren’t careful, they risk falling into the free market trap of needing bigger speakers and even bigger sponsors to bridge the gap. It’s going to happen: and this $50 fee for PodCamp Boston is just the seed. Once the free market comes into the picture it will become more difficult to control the fate of the movement that is still admittedly nascent. I suppose this worries me more than any cost of admission in itself.
Filed under: Social Media, Personal Branding, Politics, The Future, Branding, Leadership, PodCamp
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