Yesterday, I talked about the disappointment (to put it mildly) I feel whenever I run into a pointless social-media related conference. Particularly the kind that charges significantly more than the value it actually delivers, and essentially serves no purpose other than to further inflate the social media hype bubble instead of actually advancing the discipline. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, click here to go read it now.
Judging from the comments the post generated, this topic evidently struck a nerve with more than a few of you. Some of the comments were so good that I figured I should share a few of them with you today.
From Mack Collier: “The worst thing you can do for your event and the attendees is pick the speakers first, then the topics.”
Like you, I will only speak at events that stress teaching and learning. If the attendees can’t be sent home with a plan of action for how they will move forward with their social media efforts, then I won’t be a part of that event. This is a BIG reason why I am in no hurry to speak at SXSW again. I spoke there last year, was on a fabulous panel with Mario Sundar, Kami Huyse and Lionel Menchaca, but on the whole, SXSW is NOT where a company that wants to get up to speed on social media should be spending the time and money.
Now, before I got into my rant about speakers, I’ll add something that attendees should look for. Lots and lots of networking time. Not just with the speakers, but with each other. Look for interactive sessions, or open mic sessions. The more time attendees have to interact with speakers and each other, the better. That’s where the REAL value of the event comes in. It’s great that sessions are live-streamed, but that’s not where the value is, the value is in the hallways and during dinner. If the speakers at an event leave the stage and run to the airport, that’s a HUGE red flag.
As for conference organizers, the WORST thing you can do for your event and the attendees is pick the speakers FIRST, then the topics. If you say ‘OMG we have GOT to get Joe Rockstar to speak!’ then you’re screwed. You pick the topics that your attendees need to be taught about, THEN pick the speakers for that topic.
Second, you have GOT to paid your speakers. Even if you just cover travel, this is a must. Let’s say you don’t pay your speakers. That means they are out $1,000-2,000 just to get to the event. So that means they walk in the front door knowing they are a coupla thou in the hole. And how do you think they will make up that money? By trying to PUSH THEIR SERVICES on the attendees. Nice! And their presentation? Do you really think there’s much incentive for them to spend hours on making a kick-ass custom deck? The only customizing they will probably do is to add a couple more slides about THEMSELVES and how you can WORK WITH THEM.
Nice. Conference organizers, you get around this by PAYING your speakers. Don’t give them the ‘well no we can’ t pay you, but you’ll have access to HUNDREDS OF POTENTIAL CLIENTS!’ line. That’s BS. Those ‘potential clients’ are serial conference attendees, and are going to take copious notes and run home and try to do this stuff for themselves.
And as you said, there are WAY too many social media conferences. Case in point: A couple of months ago Social South was in Birmingham. Wonderful event, admission was $200, and should have been several times that. But the NIGHT before SoSo at the EXACT SAME VENUE, there was a FREE social media seminar where ‘experts will teach you all you need to know about using LinkedIn and Twitter to make $$$!’ And you better believe since this was a ‘free’ event, that attendees were subjected to a ‘free’ commercial by these ’social media experts’ on how they should HIRE THEM.
The social media conference circuit is quite frankly bloated, and broken. Hopefully organizers will pay attention to this post.
From Valeria Maltoni: “The multiple tracks and rushing to decide on what will be good from the program doesn’t cut it for me.”
It’s a really good discussion to have not just for social media. Branding and marketing conferences, international communications conferences come to mind, too.
I’ve attended my fair share and I can tell this community here – I like it how you all came in and discussed it from different angles – that the multiple tracks and rushing to decide on what will be good from the program doesn’t cut it for me.
Learning the same way I eat and am social, I take my time to enjoy the experience, absorb the context and connect with all present. Fewer speakers and some sessions to warm up with a topic and have a real discussion would result in a less disconnected and more useful experience – both for the participant and the speaker.
From John Heaney: “Is the best you can offer a 45 minute presentation on the 6 Best Facebook Fan Page Tips?”
Like you, I’ve become frustrated with the number of social media acolytes whose primary function appears to be trumpeting the importance of social media as the next great marketing channel.
We get it, already.
Want to know what’s tough? What really consumes our time and effort? Making social media efforts work. Day in, day out, engaging staff, management and clients in social media (or is that new media?) channels.
Believe me, I know how to give a kick-ass presentation that will have C-level executives salivating over the prospect of implementing their own social media initiatives. I can power through a captivating Keynote presentation that convinces them that delay is potentially ruinous.
Then, however, I have to execute a real life campaign. Design a researched strategy that makes sense for their organization and integrates with their existing marketing efforts. Design guidelines and policies to protect the organization. Introduce the campaign internally. Train employees. Train some more. Then train some more. Generate compelling content, then try to recruit internal talent to contribute their own. Market and promote the company blog, Twitter contacts, fan pages, YouTube channels and any other selected channels to targeted prospects and an existing client base. Then do it every single day. All the while tracking SM activity and tying that activity back to authentic and measurable business activity. The revenue-generating kind.
Now, can you help me with that? Or is the best you can offer a 45 minute presentation on the 6 Best Facebook Fan Page Tips?
(Right on.)
From Scott Gould: “We, the conference organisers have been hoodwinked into building celebrity events about quantity and not change incubators about quality.”
We need this kind of talking, because to be honest, we (the conference organisers) have been hoodwinked into building celebrity events about quantity and not change incubators that are about quality.
It took a lot of hard work and resistance to make Like Minds what it was (and what it will be) – as so many people wanted to pitch in with their ideas for making money and not imparting value. It takes guts to hold that type of event at the risk of financial loss.
From Amber Naslund: “A conference built putting tools in the forefront is leading with the wrong message to start with.”
The social media hype has us waaay too focused on the tactics and tools, and not nearly enough in the broader business implications. A conference built putting tools in the forefront is leading with the wrong message to start with.
I think that one gets missed a lot because the organizers are in the making-money-with-events business, not the teach-people-to-do-their-jobs-better business.
You can go read the rest of the comments (and leave your own) here. In the meantime, keep them coming.
Update: (added Monday 3 November 2009 – 13:50)
From Steve Woodruff: “I’m impatient with hearing the same old same old tired generalities, especially when it is dressed up in meaningless biz-jargon.”
Over the years, I’ve attended many, many conferences – some awful, some forgettable, and a few outstanding.
I’m getting impatient.
I’m impatient with thinly-veiled sales pitches from sponsoring companies during sessions. If you’re going to have sponsoring companies, set aside a specific time in the event when they can present their solutions openly to the audience.
I’m impatient with speakers who think their role is to walk through a series of slides and do a verbal data dump. If you cannot spark interest, tell engaging stories, use helpful analogies, facilitate discussion, and (yes, this matters) speak with a reasonably pleasing voice, then don’t be a presenter.
I’m impatient with attendees who are satisfied with passive information reception. We deserve and should demand better.
I’m impatient with hotel setups where you cannot get some light on the speaker. Really – you CAN do this.
I’m impatient with hearing the same old same old tired generalities, especially when it is dressed up in meaningless biz-jargon. If it’s not practical, real-life, and fresh, put it on a blog somewhere where it can be ignored. Because that’s what your audience is doing.
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
My question is.. are conferences still relevant?
I’d prefer some training and if possible volunteer time to get some practical experience and guidance.
I think they’re still relevant, yes, if only for the networking.
As for the training, they may require a different type of event. I have news on that front. Will share very soon. All I can say is, ask and you shall receive. 😉
Olivier
Great post and very relevant. I’m curious about your news to come, will be paying very close attention.
Thanks
Thanks. It won’t be long now. Maybe another week or two at the most. 😉
Oliver
I don’t do the conf circuit much but I have to say, you’ve nailed it. When the hallways carry more learning than the halls — you’ve got a networking event not a conference.
Conferences need to have more balls. They need to have more “unheard” of speakers that have interesting case studies or points-of-view they are willing to share. And they need to do more than just provide some dumb form for aspiring speakers to fill out.
I really like that Social Fresh requires you to submit a video of yourself speaking — any serious speaker will have one — and it gives them a chance to see a speaker in action and ask themselves, would I have found value in that as a conf attendee?
I look forward to seeing where you will speak given your new protocol for accepting engagements. Might be a nice shortcut to know where I might and might not want to spend my time and money.
@TomMartin
Cheers, Tom. Brilliantly said: “When the hallways carry more learning than the halls — you’ve got a networking event not a conference. Conferences need to have more balls.”
Well, while you can be sure that I will pick my conferences well, understand that I don’t have time to attend all the good ones. So take my presence at an event as a good sign, but don’t mistake my absence from an event for anything more than the byproduct of a busy schedule. 😉
I’ve got another one, as I sit here in a Twitter/Real-Time Discussion at Internet Summit ’09 in Raleigh. More women. There are hardly any female speakers at this conference and it is completely unacceptable. I am tired of it. I have expressed my dismay on twitter, and it has been retweeted big time. I will be talking to the organizers about this. We have to do better. Search #isum09 I’m @communitygirl
End rant.
Well, one more thing. I’ve also noticed after I speak at smaller organizational events that people are not really understanding what they should do and they feel intimidated by experts who will not speak on their level. Leave the jargon, bring the value. And stop talking about Scott Monty and Frank from Comcastcares. And I already know that Dell made $3 million. Give different examples. Find the good stuff happening locally and empower folks through those stories. Next?
And why does every single conference have someone who is going to tell me how social media won Obama the election? Or worse … who are these people who collect case studies – not projects that they have created and worked through – but cases of projects done by others. Makes me wonder.
The thing about the Obama campaign’s use of social media is that it wasn’t really all that good. Twitter in particular was horrendous. It scaled, but it was mostly traditional marketing being pushed through social media channels. Smart, sure, but hardly the Holy Grail of social media usage that everyone has touted it to be.
As for case studies, what annoys me isn’t so much that good case studies are being shared by folks who didn’t have anything to do with them. What drives me nuts is that the majority of case studies being presented are absolutely horrible. They start out with lofty “objectives” but when you read them all the way through, they’re sh*t. I read one the other week that started by talking about how company X’s social media initiatives galvanized its community, increased awareness for the brand and generated a boon in engagement and conversations. Very well written stuff. But by the end, the only piece of “data” it presented as evidence was an anecdote about how their blogger (the guy who wrote the case study) was recognized by one of his readers at a conference and started a conversation with him. That was it.
Another company (this one a major consumer brand) had its PR firm construct a wonderfully worded case study based on what it believes is a social media program. Truth: That brand puts on parties and events at major conferences and uses social media to promote them. In between, it blows off most of its “fans” on the more common social media channels. As a footnote, that incredibly successful social media program has failed to garner even 20,000 followers on Twitter, even with a full time Social Media staff of 4. Not that Twitter numbers should be a goal, but they are indicative of value and engagement. When I have more followers (and more importantly more engagement) with people than a major global brand with a dedicated staff and all the power of its marketing might, something is wrong. Yet, I find their case study of “success” popping up all over the place. I am not impressed.
Truth: Unless your case study is campaign based (like Dell’s sales via Twitter), most companies haven’t been in the social space long enough to have anything of substance to present. They’re rushing BS “case studies” to get their seat at the table or help justify the funding of programs which have, for the most part, been shams. (The fact that I had to step in and explain to so many social media directors that ROI and non financial impact were two different things is shocking. And indicative of a much larger problem.)
Remember the Skittles thing? Everyone thought it was the most brilliant use of Social Media. It was a friggin’ stunt. Nothing more. Did it impact sales of Skittles? Did it really create a sustainable community around Skittles? This is what happens when traditional PR and Advertising people get brought in to create case-study material in a space they haven’t spent more than 6 weeks exploring. It’s just sad.
There are far too many people talking out of their asses right now, and even more people believing them, hook, line and sinker. It’s a very dangerous time for Social Media. It could easily fall into the same trap that WOM did a few years ago. I don’t intend to let it happen. That’s why the #Likeminds team and I decided to put on the Summit in February. To actually cut through the bullshit and find the real social media-related case studies organizations should look at and learn from.
Great comment, Gavin. Cheers.
Olivier:
Great recap and your readers’ comment apply to all conferences and event, not just social media conferences.
Thanks for asking the tough questions and speaking out on this. Let’s just hope conference organizers, and meetings and events associations like MPI, PCMA, IAEE and others are listening. That’s the real audiences that need to hear these points!
So who has the best “Social Media Conference Bingo” card out there? 😉 Just wondering.