Charles Darwin & the Tech Conference Business

       [Gary Bolles (r) with my other former partner Robert Scoble. Photo by Shel]

Chris Hoet has posted some spot on observations on conferences over at his blog, Cross The Breeze . His sharp and specific comments bring back to Conferenza Premium Reports, which I co-founded with Gary Bolles in 2001. It has since evolved into the Conferenza Blog, where some of the pioneers and leaders of social media post about events they attend.

During my three-year Conferenza tenure, our product was a subscription-based e-newsletter. Some of the current Conferenza bloggers, like Doc Searls and David Weinberger, were live blogging conferences and these guys were one of the reasons that our business model crumbled. Another reason, was the the number of conferences that we had to cover started to deteriorate as well.

The post 9/11 era was a bad economic time for the tech industry. Not nearly as bad as the current era forebodes, but a time when conference goers really needed to justify to their superiors, employees, investors and themselves that it was worth the time and money to attend.

As the industry contracted, so did the number of conferences. The conferences that did survive, did so with fewer attendees and fewer sponsors paying less dollars. Today, just in the social media slice of the conference business, there seems to me to be an event about every 10 days. Sometimes they overlap. No one, no matter how affluent and how obsessed with the topic can attend them all or even a large fraction of them.

The conference producers who survive these hard times will need to follow all of Chris Hoet's advice. They will need to give attendees a sense of what they will gain by attending. They will need to have a sensible proposition to sponsors. Venues may no longer be so posh, but they will need to be conducive to the greatest value of all: the opportunity to meet face-to-face with colleagues who share your interests.

Just like last time, the rule of Darwin will prevail. The best of breeds will survive.