Monday, November 14, 2005
Satisfying the Typical Attendee
Seth Godin blogs on how to run a useless conference.
Key grab:
Think about the most powerful learning moments you’ve ever had. My guess is that they didn’t take place in a darkened meeting room.
Conference organizers (and more important, their clients) spend virtually all of their time and money doing one of two things:
1. Satisfying the center of the bell curve.
2. Avoiding failure
That’s why the typical conference is... typical.
Side note: Actually, one of my most powerful learning moments occurred at a conference, when I had the chance to view the Knowledge Navigator movie produced by Apple Computer in the late 1980s. (You can download a copy here--14 Megs, save it to your hard drive and view it.) I remember thinking how my world would never be the same after watching it--even today, it's pretty amazing how prescient the video was.
Even so, Seth's point is well-taken.
UPDATE: See Rich Westerfield's take on Godin's take on conferences. Sorry I missed this before.
Comments
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Key grab:
Think about the most powerful learning moments you’ve ever had. My guess is that they didn’t take place in a darkened meeting room.
Conference organizers (and more important, their clients) spend virtually all of their time and money doing one of two things:
1. Satisfying the center of the bell curve.
2. Avoiding failure
That’s why the typical conference is... typical.
Side note: Actually, one of my most powerful learning moments occurred at a conference, when I had the chance to view the Knowledge Navigator movie produced by Apple Computer in the late 1980s. (You can download a copy here--14 Megs, save it to your hard drive and view it.) I remember thinking how my world would never be the same after watching it--even today, it's pretty amazing how prescient the video was.
Even so, Seth's point is well-taken.
UPDATE: See Rich Westerfield's take on Godin's take on conferences. Sorry I missed this before.
