Mary Hodder of Napsterization is at the Blogs and Social Software Conference in Paris and she’s getting boooored. I have had the same problem at various panels that I have attended in the last few years. Seems like no matter how interesting the people around the table are, panels often end up going nowhere and one leaves the conference without any new knowledge or insight. There is always a person who talks for too long and the most interesting part, the interaction with the audience, runs out of time after a few minutes.
In her post, Mary Hodder makes a few propositions for a new form of conference. This echoes something that we had talked about for the Montreal Blog Conference. If the conference ever does come together (which is unlikely to happen in 2005), we will have to make sure to veer away from the traditional panel form.
If you are curious about the conference in Paris, visit Vancouver blogger Darren Barefoot who is also attending. His feedback is interesting because Darren has just organized a blogging conference which took place in Vancouver last February.
Maybe we just don’t need another blogging conference in Montreal… Still, the original idea did not come from a « need » but from a « desire ». I look at the long list of people who were interested and I’m thinking, wow, it would still be fun to get everybody together to talk.
Maybe we should forget about traditional organization. Perhaps all we need is to find a big room (or a bunch of small rooms), pick a few subjects and give people a date and a time. Then we just let things happen – with the help of a few « activators » (vs moderators) – and see what comes out of it. If it turns into complete chaos, we could just open a few beers and claim that all we ever wanted was another party anyway.
