The Backlash Begins
I had a feeling that the heavy emphasis on live broadcasting, twittering and blogging during conferences would have a downside.
One attendee has had it and I can understand why.
Even the best social networking tools have their limits. And that limit seems to be reached when, instead of networking and speaking to the people in front of you, you’re “networking” and “speaking” to the people who are not.
After reading this post, an absurd thought came to me. How long until a conference reception with 400 attendees is completely silent because all the attendees are live blogging and twittering instead of talking to the person next to them? Heaven help us.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm |
thanks for the link - I agree - sometimes it’s nice to talk to another human or listen to another human without having the whole world be a part of it.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:14 pm |
Heck, people go to natural wonders and never see them without the filter of a camera between them and the wondrous reality.
It makes one think they might be defaulting to the mode of most frequent communication, as a source of comfort? Fear of public speaking… so they use the means that’s at their disposal daily as an escape route?
It is a faux pas on their part and hope they find a way to relate to the live audience and still creatively utilize the new media tools.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:10 pm |
[...] Bourquin, one of the founders of the New Media Expo, has just made a great blog post - The Backlash Begins about the lunacy that some people are going too in trying to cover conference events using [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am |
Thanks for the link Tim. I was thinking this same thing when I attended the last few events. Sitting in the general session watching the speaker but looking around and everyone else has their heads down hitting the keys on computers, blackberrys and iphones. Twittering, blogging qiking etc….
I never see this at the internal sales events we produce because of course the boss is usually up in front talking so if the audience isnt interested they are sure pretending to be!
LOL
See you at the New Media Expo!
Mike
http://www.grassshackroad.com
http://www.meetingspodcast.com
“The meeting planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry”
August 24th, 2008 at 6:52 pm |
I know you posted this a few months ago, but this issue is really becoming a HUGE problem with conferences and especially seminars and workshops. It seems that this problem is not going to go away since I recently found that many of the people walking around live broadcasting or live blogging during a conference are getting paid to do so by the advertisers that are posted allover their web-site. If pressure is put on these people to leave the Lap-tops, or now iPhones, in the briefcase when entering a seminar or lecture these conference goers will quit coming since they can’t make anything off them being there.
On the other end of the stick, I had two speakers I was looking to book for my upcoming conference who have in their contracts that they are to be provided an environment free participants in the audience using laptops for any reason outside of running an overhead presentation. I have two testimonials from the references for one speaker who told me that she cut her 45 minute lecture on business development to 15 minutes and walked off the stage in discuss since the entire audiences was watching the streaming video of the speaker on micro-blogging in the next meeting room.
I am looking to moving towards putting in more controls in my conferences and let the chips fall where they may. I feel conferences are for the living and not for those who see no benefit for real live human interaction.
I look forward to hearing (or in this case, reading)others opinions of this issue and what other solutions can be put in place to issue everyone that comes to a conference is there for the purpose of the conference.