My BlogOn Conversation

If markets really are conversations and companies should engage their customers on honest and direct feedback, I would like to put it to the test. Here's my feedback on the BlogOn conference I just attended, is anyone listening to the blogsphere?

1. the wireless network was terrible, when you could get on. How do you organize a conference around online social media and not expect that the great majority of attendees are going to be online? On top of that, the event was being livecast, which chews up a pretty good amount of bandwidth. There is just no excuse for a conference organizer to not have adequate bandwidth in Manhattan.
2. There were conference tools like IRC and some kind of social software thingy, but good luck getting on them considering problem #1. On top of that, the IRC should have been displayed up on the stage so that the audience could engage in a more meaningful way than Q&A for a few minutes at the end.
3. Sure the Copacabana may have seemed like a clever place to have an event, but there wasn't anywhere you could slip out for a break/coffee, much less have any kind of privacy to have a meeting or even get on a cell phone.
4. Speaking of cellphones, did anyone check to see whether or not there was a cell signal in this venue? Apparently not, or it just wasn't a concern because I could only get a signal (T-Mobile) in half of the room.... so much for using my Blackberry to compensate for not having online access.
5. the accoustics were terrible, which is interesting because it's a nightclub.
6. the audio technicians either didn't know what they were doing or had really shitty equipment. The problems with levels, feedback, microphones, volume were too many to list
7. The conference itself is billed as an online social media event but the cool stuff around online social media was largely absent, like anything to do with tagging (although in all fairness, Peter Hirschberg from Technorati did touch on this in his very entertaining presentation at lunch yesterday.)
8. ferchristsakes, I am really getting tired of every agency/pundit getting on stage saying that companies need to "listen to blogs first". I don't need a fucking agency to tell me (and then bill me for it) my strategy should be to listen... aren't we beyond that by now? How about getting into the meat and potatoes on how you segment and identify influencers? There should have been a session about the legal issues surrounding blogging by employees and how companies are dealing with them. Somebody from Microsoft talking about their employee blogs... sure there was a guy from Sun but he was stuff on a panel with someone from Yahoo and ESPN and didn't talk at all about their employee blogging.
9. Blog analytics is clearly the elephant in the room insofar as immediate and actionable social media strategy components, but aside from a pitch here and there, not much was presented on this. How about a panel with actual customers talking about how they are using Umbria/Cymfony/Intelliseek/Sonic/Factiva/Kibo? By the way, Technorati didn't talk about Kibo, and Umbria and Cymfony were the only other vendors there.
10. Breakouts, birds of a feather sessions, workshops... nothing like that here.

On a positive note, the food was good.

Comments

[RSM]

it is good to know you had a good time...:)

[jeff]

It's NYC, you really have to try to have a bad time in this town. Had a great dinner last night at Elio with a friend who runs a hedge fund, that was really interesting. And the weather this week has been awesome.

[Glenn Fannick]

Counldn't agree more on the venue -- pretty poor choice.

And yes, the industry needs to be focusing on measuring, not just listening. Though I suspect many people are only starting to get the importance of blogs, so they haven't gotten to the "what do I do after I've started listening?" step.