Pajama Entrepreneur

Apple’s decision not to participate in any future Macworld event after 2009 came as a shock to IDG (the conference organizer) and to regular attendees. Ars Technica posted a story about IDG’s reaction to Apple’s pullout:

Paul Kent, IDG World Expo’s VP and General Manager, took a stage for his own discussion Wednesday evening to talk about the future of Macworld Expo . . . “This is a different place” than the typical trade show, Kent explained. “We understand and embrace this community, and we want this community to have a say in the conference.” . . . IDG has set up a new site, macworldexpo.ning.com, where both attendees and visitors are encouraged to register, get to know each other, and provide feedback and new ideas for helping the show to continue and grow. Kent explained later that IDG has already been tapping some aspects of the Mac community for Macworld Expo as well, like working with Mac User Groups around the country to lead events.

I got a pass to Macworld Expo (which costs between $25 and $45 but I got in free, however, it does not allow you to visit regular conference sessions). I had a chance to look at the complete conference agenda and to observe Macworld’s visitors, the booths, and the vendor-organized sessions at the Expo.

Here’s what I think is wrong with the traditional conference + trade show formula and what I think should be done, based not only upon what I saw at Macworld this week, but on every other conference I’ve attended in the last five years, including my own Muniwireless conferences:

(1) The traditional conference trade show format is too expensive. You need a large conference center to accommodate all of the sponsors’ booths. If you are holding a conference in a hotel, it must have a grand ballroom with breakout room. You have to pay a substantial non-refundable deposit many months, even a year, in advance to the hotel or conference center. If the market changes and corporate budgets take a hit, many sponsors cancel, fewer attendees show up, but you still pay the full cost of the event. In some cases, you might have to cancel the event completely and take a loss. This is too risky these days so most people don’t even bother organizing conferences anymore. Unfortunately, they can’t think of any other format. They’re stuck to the same old way of doing things.

(2) Organize a conference like SXSW Interactive where the community decides the agenda and the speakers, and where the atmosphere is that of a big party.

There’s only one conference I like to attend: SXSW Interactive in Austin which is held in March right before the regular SXSW Music and Film festival. Why? Because it’s got everything that traditional conferences don’t have:

• Young audience composed of web developers and designers, lots of creative people
• Fun, party atmosphere at the conference and in the evening
• No massive corporate sponsor presence
• Great parties at various night clubs around town

SXSW Interactive asks the community — the people who attend every year — to suggest topics for sessions. You send in a suggestion for a panel and the names of panel members. If approved, you and your panel members do a presentation. SXSW Interactive’s organizers try to make a balance so that different topics are presented to the attendees. The attendees directly participate in the creation of the agenda, unlike IDG’s (and most traditional organizers’) top down way of deciding who gets to speak and what should be discussed. If you and your friends are going to speak on panels, you and your friends will attend. For all the prattle about “community”, IDG’s Paul Kent (as quoted in the Ars Technica article) still doesn’t get it (creating a Ning Group is a pathetic fruitless attempt at “community organizing”) but that’s because IDG is a profit-making company that has to put corporate sponsors in booths. Corporate sponsors want to have a hand in deciding the agenda (albeit in a more subtle way) and often their wishes take precedence over the community’s — check out the way Macworld Expo’s topics are organized: Digital Video, IT, Mac User, Digital Music, New User, Graphic Design, Digital Photography. This is how the vendors categorize their products. It’s not the way the community would categorize their own sessions.

SXSW Interactive isn’t a small “town hall” event. It’s actually a very large event that draws hundreds of mostly young people (although there have been more people over 35 attending in the past 2 years). They use volunteers (the ushers, the people who print and hand out badges, etc.). It’s affordable too. If you’re not speaking the entrance fee is only $300. If you’re speaking, you get in for free. The parties are fabulous and everyone is there to have a good time.

This is not the case with traditional conferences where there are far too many (mostly older men in suits) standing at booths. The worst conferences are telecom-related (3GSM in Barcelona comes to mind) where it’s one massive sea of black suits and where the sessions feature an executive from a telecom operator or an equipment manufacturer droning on and on about how it is the “leading” whatchmacallit in its sector. Macworld is an exception in that regard to the traditional conference. It is more fun. There are more interesting things to see. There are hardly any suits; people are dressed in sneakers and jeans. But most of the attendees are definitely NOT under 30. At one point I saw one of the guards tell a kid that he could not get in unless accompanied by an adult. I would have turned it around and told the adults they could not get in unless accompanied by kids.

(3) I am shocked that there weren’t more young iPhone developers at Macworld.

There’s a huge ecosystem of young iPhone developers – from programmers to designers to users. Where were they? If I had been in charge of Macworld this year, I would have had a separate Macworld iPhone “un-conference”. Entry fee: $50. I would have solicited panel suggestions from the iPhone community, put them on the panels and organized lots of fun parties in San Francisco in the evenings. What did I see instead at the Macworld conference? Aging hippies wearing tie-dye and bandanas (I kid you not, it looked like Halloween). Boring parties with people standing around who have little in common except owning something branded with an Apple logo. This was a missed opportunity for IDG at this Macworld.

There are other problems with these conferences. There are too many of them. They feature boring corporate suits showing endless Powerpoint slides. Macworld at least has interesting sessions for film, photo and other creative professionals, but can’t this be done differently? Isn’t there a better, cheaper more fun way to get this community together without all that corporate overhead – the huge booths, giant convention center feel (not cozy)? The heart of the problem is this: IDG is not at the heart of the community. It’s not part of the community. It’s only a publisher who happens to publish a magazine and books.