I hate to say it but overall last week’s Office 2.0 Conference was a miss. The first two experiments (as Ismael likes to call them) were smashing successes but applying the same recipe this time around collapsed like a Soufflé. From my perspective the main reasons were:
- Poor Ismael only gives himself 6 weeks from start to finish to plan and execute the whole thing (and he doesn’t do this gig full time). The guy is brilliant and the things he can do is amazing, it’s just a different world now.
- The short time frame makes it a stress to delegate responsibility and to market the event itself (only 300 people attended this year and most everyone was a vendor)
- The number of conferences focused in this space has increased. Focusing on value is even more important.
- It’s no longer a “new” market. The same old session topics, speakers and cast of characters have been in play for a couple of years now.
- The economy makes picking and choosing discretionary trips more challenging.
My panel on Adoption (w/customers Disney, EMC, Chordiant)
This should be a wake up call
Tradeshow companies: Make sure you’re driving value at the lead-gen and content levels for your attendees. Make the effort to Market the content and attract the right buyers. If you played Xanadu last year play a different song this time around. If vendors have to speak, make sure it’s not a commercial. Focus on customers.
Speakers: Bring something new to the table. It’s worth the effort. Xandu applies to you, too. Broken record, party of one?
Vendors: Make your customers successful and then talk about that. Now that the veneer has rubbed off, the real work begins. As Godin would say, “lean into it.”
Is this the a sign for the rest of the year?
Office 2.0 kicks off the echo-chamber mania from now until the end of 2008. I’m praying to the social software gods that the rest of the year will be very different. Here’s my dance card so far this year:
- Next week I’m in NYC at Web 2.0
- KM World in the Bay Area (please, for the love of all that’s holy change that horrible name)
- The New Marketing Summit in Boston (looking forward to seeing what @chrisbrogan can do)
- Burton Group’s “Catalyst” in Prague
- Web 2.0 Berlin
- Social Media Strategies (SF)
- Defrag (Denver)
- Web 2.0 Summit (SF)
- CMO Summit (NY and then one in Napa)
- Potentially a tour over in China with @christinelu and @shelisrael (as a blogger not a jiver)
- Then eat a turkey, spin a dreidel and wonder how I gained more weight.
