Tag: w2eb

Thoughts on Conference Endings [en]

[fr] Quelques réflexions sur les fins de conférence (Web 2.0 Expo s'est vraiment fini en queue de poisson, avec démontage avant même la fin des présentations!)

Je pense qu'il a un cercle vicieux en jeu qui fait partir les gens avant la fin car il n'y a plus rien d'intéressant, et puisque les gens partents, les organisateurs ne se "donnent" pas sur la fin.

Je proposerais une dernière session sous forme de keynote "à ne pas rater", suivie d'un apéro qui permettra de finir en douceur.

As I stepped out in the hallway at the end the session discussion on Gender Issues in Web 2.0 Careers that Suw had invited me to participate in, I was quite surprised to find myself amongst booth parts, piles of branding material, and the general noise of things being taken apart.

Gosh, I thought, I hadn’t realised we were the last session!

The thing is& we weren’t.

I tried to get a cup of tea, but that was not possible anymore. Everything was closing down, the sponsors had left, the attendees were scuttling out of the venue like rats off a sinking ship.

After a bit of wandering around, I headed upstairs to the main conference room. A courageous speaker was presenting to a thin crowd amidst the clanging of the workers downstairs.

What a sad ending to what had otherwise been a rather nice conference experience.

I bumped into Jen in a corridor somewhere, and we exchanged a few same-wavelength thoughts on what was going on.

I remember being advised to keep a really good speaker for the last sessions of Going Solo, to discourage attendees from leaving early. It seems to be kind of understood that specially in the case of a multi-day conference, most attendees are going to leave before the end to catch planes and trains to go back to their loved ones (or their pile of work). So speakers don’t want end slots, and conference organisers don’t want to risk putting an important session in the last slot because “everyone” will miss it.

I say it’s a vicious circle, and conference organisers need to have the balls to make things change. Plan drinks after the last session. Make the last session a really good keynote. Announce it in advance. Sell it clearly to attendees when they register to the conference: make it something they will not want to miss. Plan for the keynote to end reasonably early, allow an hour for drinks, networking and saying good-bye, and ensure people can still get an evening flight back to where they came from.

I bet you people will start staying. If you don’t believe in your ending, they certainly won’t.

I think it is important to change this for two main reasons:

  • First, the peak-end phenomenon. We judge an experience by how it was at its best/worst, and how it ended. That’s why firework shows end with a big bang (“bouquet final” in French), speeches end with a smart closing point that sums things up, and the last 5 minutes of a movie can kill it. As conference organisers, we want everybody to go home with the most positive feeling possible about the event. Let’s not act like high-school students who do not know how to end an essay.
  • Second, saying good-bye. I find it incredibly frustrating not to be able to say good-bye to the people I’ve met or connected with during the conference. The absence of real ending makes it near to impossible to do so. Drinks at the conference venue, on the other hand, make it possible: “everyone” will be there, and people will leave little by little, so you actually get a chance to say bye.

Now, I’ve been wondering if there is a cultural streak to the importance of saying good-bye. I know that for me personally, it’s very important. (Maybe a bit too much so, though I’ve loosened up quite a bit over the years.) Are cultures which are a little less formal (I’m thinking of the US in particular) less concerned about saying good-bye?

For fun (mainly), I’ve designed a little poll to try and figure this out. Please take a minute to fill in the form below. Yes, it’s quite binary, isn’t it? If anything interesting comes out of it, I’ll let you know.

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Web 2.0 Expo, Here We Are! [en]

[fr] Me voilà à Berlin pour la conférence Web 2.0 Expo. Ça démarre!

It’s the big day today: Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin has started. As you know, I’ve been involved in the “Blogging Web 2.0 Expo” effort, so it’s doubly exciting for me to see all we’ve worked on taking shape, with all these bloggers present thanks to their hard work promoting the conference during this last month.

The venue is wonderful. It totally makes up for last year. There are nice speaker and media rooms, and even a secret live-blogging room. There is wifi (and I’ve been told it’s been up all day), there are reserved rows in the front for holders of press passes, the main keynote room is round and has nice comfy red seats, introductory music is good, Tim O’Reilly is speaking, and the slide screens are huge. Of course, I can’t load the Flickr upload page to put my photos online and my Twitter updates through Twhirl fail (even good conference wifi can only take that much, obviously, your predictable share of network timeouts) — but this seems like a good start.

Tim is saying that we need to think about how we can make a difference, that we need to work on things that matter, rather than on building startups because we think we can get them funded or sell them afterwards. It’s idealist, but I like that kind of thinking. He’s giving us all sorts of examples of use of technology for “things that matter”. Ushahidi, Open Prosthetics Project, Open Source Hardware — these are only some examples.

With great challenges come great opportunities. The Berlin Airlift.

Interesting hybrids between profit and non-profit: Benetech for example, the Omidyar Network, google.org, Enchufate al software libre, AMEE, wattzon.org.

EveryBlock, click diagnostics, patientslikeme, 23andme.

Robust strategy #2: create more value than you capture. Less focus on “how do I make money” and more on “how do I create value for my users”.

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Stephanie's October Conference Tour: Web 2.0 Expo Europe [en]

[fr] Après Lisbonne, direction Berlin pour la conférence Web 2.0 Expo, dont j'assure (avec Suw Charman-Anderson et Nicole Simon) la gestion des accréditations blogueurs.


Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008
 After [speaking at SHiFT](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/10/12/stephanies-october-conference-tour-shift/), I will head over to Berlin for the next stop in my October Conference Tour. Second conference:

Web 2.0 Expo Europe, 21-23 October 2008, Berlin

I attended Web 2.0 Expo Europe last year, taking notes (go to the beginning of the month) and giving one of my Babel Fish talks at Web2Open. At the height of my conference burn-out after FoWA, I was pretty cranky and critical of the conference (particularly the infrastructure), and it’s where I decided to start a company to organize my own events.

This year, I’m co-heading the Blogging Web 2.0 Expo Europe programme with Suw and Nicole (French post). I’ll be going to the event to have a chance to meet all the participating bloggers we’ve been working with over the last month (they’re listed in the Web 2.0 Expo blog sidebar) — and [Janetti](http://twitter.com/janerri), who initiated this outreach programme.

If you haven’t registered yet, go and visit these blogs — all bloggers have 35% discount codes to distribute, so if you know one of them, ask! Here’s a short video of Suw and I where we tell you why you should come to the conference :-).

Setting up and running this programme has been a fascinating experience, and you can expect some blogging about what we did once the event is over. (Note: I’m doing something similar in spirit, though a little different in form, with [blogger accreditations for LeWeb in Paris](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/10/06/blogger-accreditations-for-leweb-paris/) — we have more than enough French- and English-language bloggers but are still looking for people to cover the conference in other languages.)

While I’m at it, I will be taking part in Suw Charman-Anderson’s discussion about Gender Issues in Web 2.0 Careers as a panelist. Neither of us are fans of “women in technology” discussions, as you can see from the title of the discussion, and I’m really looking forward to see where we’ll take these issues.

As an aside, when I organised Going Solo, I did not put tons of effort into “involving women”, and it turns out over half the speaker roster was female. Does it have anything to do with the fact I’m a woman?

So, see you in Berlin?

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