Comments on: Tech Conferences Struggle With Technology

By: E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez » Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – A Proposal for DIA

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:08:30 +0000

[...] out the very insightful blog post from Mary Abraham under the title "Tech Conferences Struggle With Technology" to give you an idea of the kind of frustration that permeated throughout the entire event. [...]

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:39:58 +0000

Claire & Doug –

Connectivity=Plumbing. Too true! The hotel hosting ILTA09 is charging folks a daily fee for Internet access. The fee is mandatory. It will be interesting to see if the internet access is widely available or limited to hotel rooms. Let's hope they've adopted Claire's “Conference & Event Planning 2.0″ mindset and execute flawlessly. (Yes, I am an incurable optimist…)

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:37:29 +0000

Daniel –

Given the enthusiastic use of these resources by the tech crowd, perhaps self-help solutions (like the 3g phone) are the only path forward. Too bad these solutions aren't cheap. We could transform society with cheap/free widely-available, reliable WiFi.

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:39:58 +0000

Doug –

Connectivity=Plumbing. Too true! The hotel hosting ILTA09 is charging folks a daily fee for Internet access. The fee is mandatory. It will be interesting to see if the access is widely available or limited to hotel rooms.

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:37:29 +0000

Daniel –

- Mary

By: cflanagan

cflanagan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:36:15 +0000

I agree with Doug and recognize it's not the conference planners, but the Hotel. I'm sure the conference planners at our E2.0 conference last year made the Westin (who hosted this event again this year) painfully aware of our connectivity issues and requirements last year.

Did they not think a new model of business and support for a tech event was required? Maybe this requires a “Conference & Event Planning 2.0″ mindset that hotels and conference facilities need to think of and adapt to as well. I like Doug's point – “connectivity has become a utility, like plumbing” for all the same reasons we all just discussed this past week.

By: Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:16:04 +0000

Although we blame the conference organizers, it is the hotels that let us down. Hotels don't understand that internet connectivity has become a utility, like plumbing. They still charge an extra fee for connecting to the internet in your room.

At the Westin last year, they installed extra connection spots during E2.0. Someone ripped them out over the course of the year.

By: August Jackson

August Jackson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:09:41 +0000

One approach is for conference planners to reach out to other conference planners and attendees that have experience in specific venues to ask about their experience with connectivity in those venues. When all else fails pose a question on Twitter, a LinkedIn group and engage your personal and professional network.

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:42:20 +0000

It's even harder for conference organizers to wrap their minds around when you consider that attendees of techy conferences like e2conf are using orders of magnitude more bandwidth than attendees of other industry trade shows.

I continue to think that anyone attending these things needs to go in with open eyes and *not* expect usable wifi at any time throughout the show. Take a 3g phone and figure out a way to tether your laptop to it.

If that won't work, set up a post by email function for your blog (or use posterous) and use a blackberry/iphone/whatever to blog/tweet to your heart's content. You might have trouble sampling the hashtag stream in realtime that way but you can still keep your output level high.

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:39:15 +0000

It's a *very* difficult technical problem to get rock-solid mobile out to a conference. Realistically if you want to guarantee this you've got to make it a prime item on your conference budget - and thus your attendee's cost to participate.

Check out this crazy article on the Obama inauguration and its momentarily crippling impact on the US cellular networks. Imagine the same sort of thing on a smaller scale being necessary for every tech conference.

There are a few companies and products out there aiming to solve this problem but it's just not big enough - yet - for everyone to really "get" it. If more of these conferences were run by centralized management maybe they'd be able to insitutionalize a proper Wifi process but then they'd probably wind up irritating con-goers with the other aspects of a tightly managed experience.