At the end of the month, I am headed for my 4th conference of the year. I hope something exciting happens or at least something different. I have been to both traditional conferences and un-conferences this year but all of them were down right uneventful.

Traditional conferences always have some big headliners but they never say much. The un-conferences are a cool concept but the ones I have attended never really delivered. Everyone was just milling around waiting for someone to take charge and do something. In the end very few did anything… (myself included)
I long for a conference to take changes. Here are some suggestons:

  • Let vendors pitch their products at a session. In fact have some competitors go back-to-back.  Most conferences despise the concept of selling at the show. Of course, they are are happy to charge for trade show space. Why not just go NASCAR and let people pitch. Maybe a fight would break out between vendors. That would be cool…
  • Ban the slides. Make everyone give a speech or do something without slides. I mean when the lights go down it becomes nap time anyway.
  • Ban laptops and cell phones. Seriously, in the era of continued partial attention no one is paying attention. If someone agreed to speak the least the audience can do is listen. If you can’t part with your phone or laptop, then don’t go.
  • How about American Idol style demos. The audience could vote off the bad demos…
  • Have the show an alternate location other than a hotel or convention center.
  • Offer a money back guarantee for each session. If you don’t like the session get a pro-rated refund. Would this not get feedback that was ten times more useful than the survey?
  • Never server chicken at lunch.
  • Anyone who speaks should be responsible for saying something real. Ban the political correctness. Give an award to the person who says the most controversial thing.