Buying and Selling eContent - Wrap Up
This year's Buying & Selling eContent conference was a good networking opportunity in a beautiful locale, as always. But, as Steve points out, there was little provocative discussion this year. In my post-conference survey, where it asks for the three best speakers, I listed them as John Blossom, Patrick Spain and David Meerman Scott. While all three always have something interesting to say, they are also the voices that I read and speak to somewhat regularly. For me, there were no "aha" moments at this year's BSeC.
That said, this is primarily a networking conference and the conversations, both in the formal sessions and at the informal venues, were compelling and interesting. I commend Dick Kaser for his efforts to reshape the conference around these conversations, which were a big improvement over past years.
Hi Barry. Excellent points about "aha" moments and provocative discussions. I'm not talking about the BSeC conference in particular, because I wasn't there(!), but rather most conferences in general. As I think back about the various technology and content/publishing conferences I've attended over the years, the sessions/speakers I appreciated the most are the ones that ranked high on the aha/provocative scale. Even if I didn't agree with that person's point of view I still had to admit they made me think further about my own. When I go to hear someone speak I look to be inspired. I want the speaker to either help me figure something out or cause me to look at the situation in a totally different way.
So the challenge is this: How do you manage to secure only high aha/provocative speakers for a conference? Why not leverage the community at large for this rather than just the conference attendees and their survey sheets?
Now if someone could line up a conference with even just 2 or 3 of this type of speaker/session I'll bet registration rates would exceed their wildest expectations!
Posted by: Joe Wikert | March 29, 2007 at 12:32 PM