I went to the Mashups/Being Digital conference yesterday. Here are some basics about conferences:
- Wear a T-shirt with you brand on it. It’s the cheapest advertising you’ll get.
- So you attended and none of your colleagues
did? Try and tell everyone what you learned ,what happened, and any
trends you picked up on. If possible, get any presentation materials
afterwards to share around. If this fails then go to slide share as it
may have been posted there by the speaker independent of the organisers. - If you fast discover that the speaker/debate
is a waste of time then cut you losses and find someone to speak to
outside of the auditorium.
My thoughts on the conference itself?
The conference was subdivided in to rough 1 hour slots covering:
advertising, content, social, local, search, retail, identity. The format was a “speaker” (or two) would give a presentation-based talk on a specific area which was designed to inspire a debate on the area.
I don’t think this worked. Presentations were cut too short and the debate that followed was frequently very weak. It did’t always fail:
the identity section worked because: i) the moderator was very good and knew her stuff, ii) the panel (?) also knew their stuff at a technical and business level, iii) the presentation given was educational.
Summary
There was a faux debate around whether there were new rules or old rules for advertising. The essence of this was that context counts. Andrew Gerrard was blatant in his promotion of his own services. Shame on you. Kate Burns probably emerged with her reputation intact if not enhanced.
In the subject of identity and Open ID, Simon Willison gave a good presentation which I found educational (what I know about Open ID is not significantly better although it has helped me understand that it’s not all it is cracked up to be) and Wendy Grossman did a great moderation job truly adding value rather than just asking set piece questions.
On the subject of content the ITN representative essential stated that they were laggards in the technology space and would always be so.
Peter Miles was impressive while the service being offered by Put Place tells me the net top thin client is even more of a reality.
Andrew Grill
moderated the local section well and Tim Warr was a good speaker even if his presentation threw up more questions than direction on future tools.
The social debate was pretty poor and the panel spent a lot of time vaguely raising awareness of their own service while not actually giving any insights. Which reminds me of a post I read on Rob Hinchcliffe’s blog. I let you decide what piece I refer to.
I would rater have seen Loic Le Meur in person than a short video. Yes he is well know, yes he has interesting things to say but this was simply a means of having the conference benefit from his personal brand name.
