The Ugly Truth about Conferences and Exhibitions…

In my 13 years, I’ve had my fair share of conferences, symposiums, fairs, exhibitions, beats, mashup’s, get together’s, mixers and what have you.

This is what I have learnt:

Content:

The BEST meets come from established players who really do it with a focus on CONTENT first – advertisers and sponsors later.

Consider the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco each February – March.

The Content is curated with PERFECTION.

The process is tough and the selection even more severe.

What works for them is that the content committees comprise of Industry people who care 2 hoots for money – they are PURISTS and want the BEST knowledge to be presented to the world. Therefore they put pitches through the fire before they are selected.

GDC pitch submissions end months before the real event.

Also, WHAT you present is screened, curated and CANNED – so that its the best of the best and unadulterated content out there.

Finally, attendees are required to mark speakers so that they can be graded and marked and invited/not considered next time!

This takes TIME and PERSEVERANCE – 2 commodities that unfortunately are in thin supply nowadays.

Sponsorships, Attendance and Exhibition fees:

My observation is that the BEST events are those who focus on the bulk of revenues  from attendees (who are there for the content and connections), then on exhibitors (who want people to walk in and see their stuff physically, have tete a tete meets and also connect with existing customers) and lastly on silly Sponsorships who are essentially companies dying to get recognized fast.

Now, if you change this order, then you are in SERIOUS TROUBLE:

Sponsors DEMAND the hell out of anyone they pay money to, and events are not different.

So you see some morons presenting their entire business pitch on stage, ads in the papers showing their criminal looking faces and just an air of pandering that befits politics more than a place where you come to earn knowledge.

Check it out – Sponsor heavy events will have maximum ‘ramayan bhashan ppt sessions’ – Attendee paying sessions will have the maximum of expert panel discussions.

Disclosure practices:

The BEST practice is to state ON the printed and online programme sheets that the is that an X or Y discussion is SPONSORED.

Now that takes guts – coz lots of people dont wanna go for it, but it also does 2 things:

– those who go for a sponsored session are really interested in the sponsoring Company’s Business and Product.

– The sponsored session content has to be GREAT coz that’s what keeps people in the room!

Point – I went recently to a sponsored session by GameSpy.com that taught me how to build a game from scratch in Unity! I mean they built a live game in from of you. I LOVED every minute of it and tweeted about it and still remember the Company name!

The same was the case with a sponsored Amazon session in which the Amazon guys made a terrific pitch about how the Amazon market place can create value!

Conclusion:  There is an event every other day nowadays. So select the ones you go for very carefully; coz who cares about the money you will waste – its YOUR TIME that is irreplaceable!!

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Note – this post is dedicated to the WORST event organizers i have ever met in my life
TMF&A india – who inspired me to CANCEL a moderator role for the first time in my life.

Read about the AMAZING Amazon event

Read about another Spectacular mobile I event I really was excited about

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