Great points, Adam. I particularly agree that so much does come down to “relationships.”
(This is a slightly uncomfortable thing for me to admit, because my mom — who spent a career as a family/marriage therapist — often told me, “David, everything is relationships. That’s what’s important.” It has only been in the past decade or so that I finally realized, “dang, my mom was right after all.”)
Of course, I also should have noted that I am super-biased, as I am an event producer. (Which you know, but others might not.) We have been forced to take our event online this year. Quite the adventure.
Yeah, mothers are often right, even if we realize that only quite a bit later.
I think I’d have a harder time developing relationships in today’s world because I detest social media, and the people who seem to be fluid about making new friends online are largely doing so in that environment. I prefer mailing lists and forums (like this) where there’s a relatively stable group. That’s what I had back in the day, and what I was able to leverage when Macworld and similar in-person events were around.
I do feel terrible for you with Creative Pro. TidBITS is basically unaffected by all this, and my TidBITS Content Network business is fine for now, but I can imagine just how awful it would feel to be forced to cancel an in-person conference that’s a large part of your livelihood.
Seth Godin had an insightful comment the other day. When faced with a new situation, you can react, respond, or initiate. Responding is better than just reacting, and initiating something new is even better yet. Not that it’s easy!
I have actually been to a conference with Marc Z and I agree 100%.
You can learn from a presentation but the deep creative stuff happens in face to face chats when multiple people talk about a topic. It is not even an intentional presentation of ideas but a very organic “dot connecting” exercise. As the conversation progresses more dots come to focus and lots of ideas are spawned. It is not that every dot should be connected and sometimes in these conversations you realize a dot you thought connected is actually not truly a connection.
My son related his experience in college in a biochemistry class where the professor had his text book laminated. He would snap out a page from the ring binder and wonder the class talking about a topic. My son said some of the great revelations happened because of another students question that got unravelled on the spot by the professor AND some of the other students.
I suppose in theory you could do the same in some sort of electronic hang out but I suspect the platform could not always achieve this face to face method of communicating.
Whoa big fellas. The issue is a dire one. The issue, for me, is NOT travel costs, or conference costs, or the value of face to face interactions. The issue is SWAG! I like swag and not being able to get swag is giving me nightmares. I mean where will my wardrobe be without the fresh tee shirts I have been getting for years at shows and conferences? Does that mean I will have to be topless in a few years?
So, @david26, can you tell us a little about what you’re doing to make CreativePro an interesting virtual event? What platform are you using? Will there be swag?
We are struggling with the swag issue. It may sound crazy, but picking the swag and designing the artwork is one of my favorite parts of the show. I love useful swag, so we’ve done a lot of kitchen things: e.g. pint glasses, pan scrapers, and jar openers! (We still hear from attendees from years ago about how they still use those things.)
So we’re working on a “virtual goodie bag” of stuff. It won’t be the same, but how on earth could we get physical stuff to people, especially because we often have attendees from 5 or 6 continents.
As for making it more interesting: We are working out those details, but it’s likely that the event will rely on a combination of streaming video and Zoom meetings, plus an online forum, private pages, etc. We’ve used a platform called Pathable for many years, and now they’ve expanded that for virtual events, so we’re testing that option.
Here’s the biggest negative about virtual conferences: proprietary software and privacy issues.
For instance, I refuse to have a Google or Facebook or Instagram account… yet those are often required for a virtual connection. With all the problems Zoom has (every day there’s a new terrible story about their security problems), I wouldn’t install that if you paid me. There are a 100 other solutions from tiny companies, but no one has heard of them, and getting participants to sign up for a strange new service is a challenge.
So then I’m stuck: either I compromise on my values or don’t participate in a conference.
This brings up serious problems for the future: are a portion of the public going to be excluded from certain activities just because they don’t have a particular social media or conferencing app installed? Will someone fill this void with a better solution or one that works across platforms?
I’m already infuriated with so many companies that only do things via Facebook or other media I don’t use. (What is wrong with an ordinary website?) This trend toward virtual sounds like a dangerous path.
This is my biggest concern with all the sudden interest in virtual meetings, events, etc. It’s happening so quickly that I don’t feel there is proper evaluation of the privacy aspects. And the software people adopt now is likely to be harder to shift later. I just read about Jitsi earlier today which is an open source conferencing solution that doesn’t require setting up an account. I haven’t had a chance to investigate properly, but sounds interesting:
Overall, I think there are a lot of meetings and events that could happen virtually with the right tools. Often people spend more time travelling than doing anything useful. And going to an event that then turns out to be a lot less useful than you thought it would be is even worse. But there will also always be a place for in-person meetings and events, and as others have said there are benefits from them that can’t be moved online.
Indeed, although I suspect similar tradeoffs with in-person conferences exist already. For some people, going through a body scanner or being physically patted down in airport security would be compromising their values, and for others, supporting the climate change impact of airplane travel might be a significant compromise.
That’s not to minimize your concerns or anyone else’s, just to note that others have probably had to make the opposite decision because of their equally strongly held values.
Adam, you are a prime Tech journalist whose articles publicize the conference aims, announcements, etc. Heaven forbid these conferences only allowed people whose jobs were in the “targeted audience”!
Oh goodness, there’s no suggestion that media would ever be banned from conferences. My point was merely that what I get out of a conference is probably very different from what someone who is in the target audience gets from it.
Yesterday I thought of another in-person benefit: for a WFH hermit like me, such conferences are a major social activity. Obviously this wouldn’t apply to many, but the main conference I go to is for developers, many of whom work in solitary. Virtual conferences aren’t quite the same experience.
True, Adam, there isn’t such a suggestion - yet. The concern is IF Apple, et al decide to expand the smaller sized conferences, the temptation MIGHT be there to restrict the number of slots allowed to the media. Here are a couple of questions concerning WWDC:
In the past physical conferences, were the media slots over and above the 6000 mentioned and was the media allowed into the sessions?
As for the new virtual conferences, will the media be allowed to attend the same (or more) freely as they were the physical conferences?
Apple has only ever invited media to the keynote at WWDC, and even then, not that many people. I’ve been invited only once, back in 1997 or so, by Michael Mace, who was a VP at the time. Alas, I wasn’t able to go that year.
I sort of doubt that virtual conferences will be all that different for the media—usually conferences very much want media to attend.
There’s a very interesting article in today’s New York Times that covers the critically important health and safety elements of planning a conference during a major pandemic, including sanitation and regular disinfecting throughout each day, protective gear, social distancing, safety barriers in and between exhibits, security, etc. Locating a venue big enough to handle all the necessary distancing and barrier requirements and hotels that can be trusted to do the same are a whole other, but equally important, ball game:
If O’Reilly and Apple choose to keep their conferences online forever after, I can understand it.
Ouch. I can’t see in-person conferences happening in a big way until there’s a vaccine that everyone has. The simple problem is that most conferences aren’t absolutely essential, and too many people are going to pass because they’re not worth the risk, whatever the precautions. And with reduced attendance, the economics of the conferences start to falter in a big way.
Having been to lots of conferences of all kinds, they all fall into one of three categories:
Celebrity meet-and-greet events. Like ComiCon (and hundreds of similar cons on smaller scales). These probably can’t be done remotely, because the whole purpose of attending is to meet famous people (or at least be in the same room where they’re talking).
Marketing cons. Like WWDC, MWC, NAMM, and countless others. These are primarily advertising/marketing events where industry people can get to meet vendors. Yes, there are technology sessions, but they are rehearsed presentations that could just as easily be done over conferencing.
Standards body meetings. Like those held by the IETF, IEEE and TIP. Real work takes place at these events - mostly in the breakout sessions, not at the staged presentations or on the convention floor. These breakouts could be done over conferencing, but there’s a loss in doing so. Most of the real work already takes place remotely (via conference calls, e-mail and web forums), but those face-to-face meetings are important avenues for brainstorming and other development work that doesn’t fit cleanly into a standardized environment.
