What's left when we leave? I'm not talking about the lingering perfume or the fond memory of someone leaving the room. Without being macabre, I'm talking about what's left after we check out from this mortal soil? In the past there were few opportunities to leave behind much more than letters, memories and pictures in cardboard boxes stored in garages and attics for the people left behind. Unless you were famous, gifted or athletically empowered the ability to leave behind a legacy in the arts, culture or on the sporting field were limited.
Not so nowadays with the web having an unlimited memory and the capacity to hold a universe of information and data beyond our comprehension. Every time you comment, blog, download, upload, befriend, like and save anything on the web, a footprint of you is left for eternity. Eternity, you finally get confirmation you'll live on forever, even if it's only in the detritus of the flotsam and jetsam of the web.
Who knows how long your email address will survive to get spam? Maybe spam is the new cockroach living long after our demise to fill up our inbox till it bursts at the seams. Maybe you should have that special out of office ready just in case, "Sorry I can't reply to your obviously important email but I'm dead, which you would know if you knew me well!" Maybe we need to figure out how to clean up our web mess before we leave? Who looks after the cleaning up when we are gone? Does anyone care? How will they access your stuff without a password?
Facebook was one of the first on the web to work on a policy for people who departed the social scene. "We first realised we needed a protocol for deceased users after the Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates," says Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder. Facebook created a "memorial state" so that once confirmed you have actually left the social scene, friends and relatives can continue to view your profile. Although they won't give you back password protected information.
So you'll hang around in fleeting comments on Facebook, maybe on a head hunters list from LinkedIn or perhaps just in fading (?) photos on Flickr as a virtual someone in a virtual world. How do your friends get closure if you constantly come up in a Google search or an email list that can't be shut down? Why won't you go away? How does the spectre of you continue to inhabit the web?
As the world spends more time on computers the breadth and width of our personal coverage increases, it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to tidy up our mess or sweep away our footprints. Maybe that's how it should be as we all finally get a chance to leave something behind or maybe we should think twice about leaving that caustic remark and that photo that just won't go away?
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Useless or Not?
$1.2 trillion is how much Americans are spending annually on retail goods and services they absolutely don't need. The US is seeing upward consumer movement because marketing is motivating and engaging buyers to work towards goals that don't always revolve around bread and milk. When talking about Australian retail, a telling statistic, indicated that 40% of retail spend, ends up at Woolies and Coles. Not much room at those stores for motivational buying other than the expensive baked beans with ham.
Australian retail is in the doldrums, especially if you are listening to people like Gerry Harvey and the large retailers and with short term figures not indicating any change in direction, it seems we may need some help from our cousins across the Pacific, when it comes to loosening our saving attitudes. Seems we have learnt how to save again and once the dollars are in the piggy bank, we are loathe to spend it, except for shopping at Coles and Woolies.
While the US consumer enjoys blowing dollars on ancillary "stuff", the US economy seems the better for it and the spend on jewellery, alcohol, gambling, fast cars and chocolate is as stimulating to the economy as it is to the ego. Dan Ariely, Professor at Duke University points at marketing to jolt us out of our consumer doldrums and to give the retail economy a boost from a new kind of capitalism based on consumption of things people don't really need but things they are motivated to work for.
His article in the Harvard Review pointed to our increasing leisure time and the need to fill it with things that motivate us to work towards them, when he said, "let’s not discount the role of aspiration and the desire for incremental luxuries, things we want and don’t necessarily need. They can fuel productivity and thus have a valuable function in our economy."
Dan asks us to consider our current consumer environment: "Multiply the desire for thousands of products of varying levels of utility: iPads, leather couches, crystal martini glasses, cars, garden gnomes. It’s like having thousands of little motivational speakers hovering around us."
Gerry Harvey would love to be one of those motivational speakers but we have another fly in the ointment of retail recovery and that's our high dollar, which is attracting people who would normally spend an afternoon at Harvey Norman, to now spend time on the web scouring for deals that Gerry used to spruik. Yet there is hope on the horizon and the marketing angle for the retailers should involve the aspirational, the motivational and creating the desire to accumulate things that have more meaning than just function and that speak to our emotions. Something that Woolies and Coles would have trouble doing for loaves of bread.
If Apple can do it with a few select products then surely the retail industry has the ability to reconnect with their customers on a much more basic level of want and desire, without having to challenge each other on bottom line pricing. $1.2 trillion on non essential "stuff" should be all the motivation Australian retailers need to see the future.
Australian retail is in the doldrums, especially if you are listening to people like Gerry Harvey and the large retailers and with short term figures not indicating any change in direction, it seems we may need some help from our cousins across the Pacific, when it comes to loosening our saving attitudes. Seems we have learnt how to save again and once the dollars are in the piggy bank, we are loathe to spend it, except for shopping at Coles and Woolies.
While the US consumer enjoys blowing dollars on ancillary "stuff", the US economy seems the better for it and the spend on jewellery, alcohol, gambling, fast cars and chocolate is as stimulating to the economy as it is to the ego. Dan Ariely, Professor at Duke University points at marketing to jolt us out of our consumer doldrums and to give the retail economy a boost from a new kind of capitalism based on consumption of things people don't really need but things they are motivated to work for.
His article in the Harvard Review pointed to our increasing leisure time and the need to fill it with things that motivate us to work towards them, when he said, "let’s not discount the role of aspiration and the desire for incremental luxuries, things we want and don’t necessarily need. They can fuel productivity and thus have a valuable function in our economy."
Dan asks us to consider our current consumer environment: "Multiply the desire for thousands of products of varying levels of utility: iPads, leather couches, crystal martini glasses, cars, garden gnomes. It’s like having thousands of little motivational speakers hovering around us."
Gerry Harvey would love to be one of those motivational speakers but we have another fly in the ointment of retail recovery and that's our high dollar, which is attracting people who would normally spend an afternoon at Harvey Norman, to now spend time on the web scouring for deals that Gerry used to spruik. Yet there is hope on the horizon and the marketing angle for the retailers should involve the aspirational, the motivational and creating the desire to accumulate things that have more meaning than just function and that speak to our emotions. Something that Woolies and Coles would have trouble doing for loaves of bread.
If Apple can do it with a few select products then surely the retail industry has the ability to reconnect with their customers on a much more basic level of want and desire, without having to challenge each other on bottom line pricing. $1.2 trillion on non essential "stuff" should be all the motivation Australian retailers need to see the future.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Library in my Pocket.
The Nielsen statistics on book publishing and what makes a best seller have hit the proverbial web wall. It was hard enough to get a book published, let alone make any money from it and now the web wants a slice of the action. The telling statistics of over 1.2 million books published each year, with 950,000 of them selling less than 99 copies, another 200,000 selling less than 1,000 copies and only 25,000 selling more than 5,000 copies, added to a 25% decrease in sales, points to a need for new distribution channels if authors are going to find bigger audiences.
The Association of American Publishers has just released sales figures showing that e books have now surpassed print in all categories. Is this the death of "real books" or just a big bad nail in the coffin? E book sales are up 116% year on year and show no sign of slowing down when looking at February's figures of up 202% over last February. With audio books also on the increase it's pointing to a mobility need in our lives, and no matter how small they print that paperback novel, it's now obviously too big to carry around when compared with book readers and tablets.
One of the anomalies of all this downloading is the desire for many people to go back over their past readings and just as the iPod caused people to delve into the vast back catalogue of music, to rediscover and enjoy books long thrown away or out of print. Just as the iPod convinced people to carry their entire music collection in their back pockets, so will e readers compile vast libraries of e books for people to carry around in their handbags or briefcases.
So will this new landscape of $9.99 books throw up new best seller lists, will it give us a slew of new authors banging out books on their iPads and down loading them to Apple or Amazon to be sold via online marketing strategies? With the old guard selling their books at $25 - $30, online publishing is going to have to sell more books just to get to old revenue numbers, albeit without any trees affected and only bytes of information to carry on the virtual bookshelves. Still the profit line should be greater with no stock to carry aside from electronic bits and no end to shelf space.
Aside from the publishing world, the demise of books has a greater effect already felt locally, with Borders Books and Angus and Robertson filing for bankruptcy. What will become of your favourite corner bookstore? What about the humble furniture maker who no longer has requests to build book shelves or libraries, along with desk top publishing and snap printing operators? The fallout will be greater than anyone anticipated.
My question in all of this, is how many books are you prepared to buy before you decide to recommend and swap your latest read via the next Napster style, file sharing site? What will that do to the online book world? Is Justin Timberlake, sorry Sean Parker using his Facebook billions designing the next file sharing library as we speak?
The Association of American Publishers has just released sales figures showing that e books have now surpassed print in all categories. Is this the death of "real books" or just a big bad nail in the coffin? E book sales are up 116% year on year and show no sign of slowing down when looking at February's figures of up 202% over last February. With audio books also on the increase it's pointing to a mobility need in our lives, and no matter how small they print that paperback novel, it's now obviously too big to carry around when compared with book readers and tablets.
One of the anomalies of all this downloading is the desire for many people to go back over their past readings and just as the iPod caused people to delve into the vast back catalogue of music, to rediscover and enjoy books long thrown away or out of print. Just as the iPod convinced people to carry their entire music collection in their back pockets, so will e readers compile vast libraries of e books for people to carry around in their handbags or briefcases.
So will this new landscape of $9.99 books throw up new best seller lists, will it give us a slew of new authors banging out books on their iPads and down loading them to Apple or Amazon to be sold via online marketing strategies? With the old guard selling their books at $25 - $30, online publishing is going to have to sell more books just to get to old revenue numbers, albeit without any trees affected and only bytes of information to carry on the virtual bookshelves. Still the profit line should be greater with no stock to carry aside from electronic bits and no end to shelf space.
Aside from the publishing world, the demise of books has a greater effect already felt locally, with Borders Books and Angus and Robertson filing for bankruptcy. What will become of your favourite corner bookstore? What about the humble furniture maker who no longer has requests to build book shelves or libraries, along with desk top publishing and snap printing operators? The fallout will be greater than anyone anticipated.
My question in all of this, is how many books are you prepared to buy before you decide to recommend and swap your latest read via the next Napster style, file sharing site? What will that do to the online book world? Is Justin Timberlake, sorry Sean Parker using his Facebook billions designing the next file sharing library as we speak?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sports Analogy.
A recent discussion, okay arguement, about the merits of large pay packets for executives and CEOs left a lot of room for further analysis of what makes for a fair exchange of skills versus dollars. The open debate was held over the most egalitarian of board tables, the local pub, and decisions made over a beer seemed to have the gravity and foresight to fix any and all of the problems associated with the great CEO debate. Throw in a few shots of tequila and sporting analogies of locals made good, being paid a fortune to play a game, and you have all the elements of a truly one sided debate.
Of course no one agreed that CEOs were worth the money being paid, especially today, when the ratio is close to 250-500 times the normal wage. Management guru Peter Drucker once said that companies need to keep executive pay close to 20 X 1 to avoid damaging company morale and creating cynicism towards management. Interesting how time takes care of the mathematics and acceptance of the increase.
There are certain reasonings around the increase in CEO pay packets and most now are aligned in some way with the interests of the shareholders but this assumes that both those beliefs profit by a CEO driven to self serving interest in maximising his pay. Shareholder value is also a selfish view and with both sides wanting to make money they don't often agree on each other's value. So the recent realignment of shareholder power to knock back CEO bonuses unless warranted has become a stumbling block for the future employment of some CEOs. Do CEOs now fear shareholders more than they do their boards?
Having said all of that I still believe that individuals can have enormous effect on company culture, strategy and direction so as to keep all sides happy. These are the special individuals where the consensus of whom to pay is more important than what to pay.
They are the players that want the ball in their hands at the end of the game with 3 seconds to play, with the team down 2 points, who then score the 3 point basket to win. They are the Michael Jordans being paid $90,000 a game plus a new pair of shoes every time they step on court. They are the Tiger Woods ( c'mon he's coming back ) pulling in the GDP of small island nations because they are so good at what they do, their individual skills are never questioned and the results speak for themselves.
What's a Steve Jobs, a Tony Hsieh, a Jeff Bezos or a Larry Page worth? If sentiment tells us that the company would be worse off without these leaders then surely their compensation comes a long way behind their achievements. They have become the player that fans are willing to shell out big dollars to watch, no matter that the grocery money would be better spent on essentials. They are the ones that make a difference in the last minute of the game when everything is on the line and you wouldn't want the ball in anyone else's hands.
Agreeing on all of that, a few beers later, a more pressing question came to light, who are you working for and would you pass them the ball with 3 seconds to go?
Of course no one agreed that CEOs were worth the money being paid, especially today, when the ratio is close to 250-500 times the normal wage. Management guru Peter Drucker once said that companies need to keep executive pay close to 20 X 1 to avoid damaging company morale and creating cynicism towards management. Interesting how time takes care of the mathematics and acceptance of the increase.
There are certain reasonings around the increase in CEO pay packets and most now are aligned in some way with the interests of the shareholders but this assumes that both those beliefs profit by a CEO driven to self serving interest in maximising his pay. Shareholder value is also a selfish view and with both sides wanting to make money they don't often agree on each other's value. So the recent realignment of shareholder power to knock back CEO bonuses unless warranted has become a stumbling block for the future employment of some CEOs. Do CEOs now fear shareholders more than they do their boards?
Having said all of that I still believe that individuals can have enormous effect on company culture, strategy and direction so as to keep all sides happy. These are the special individuals where the consensus of whom to pay is more important than what to pay.
They are the players that want the ball in their hands at the end of the game with 3 seconds to play, with the team down 2 points, who then score the 3 point basket to win. They are the Michael Jordans being paid $90,000 a game plus a new pair of shoes every time they step on court. They are the Tiger Woods ( c'mon he's coming back ) pulling in the GDP of small island nations because they are so good at what they do, their individual skills are never questioned and the results speak for themselves.
What's a Steve Jobs, a Tony Hsieh, a Jeff Bezos or a Larry Page worth? If sentiment tells us that the company would be worse off without these leaders then surely their compensation comes a long way behind their achievements. They have become the player that fans are willing to shell out big dollars to watch, no matter that the grocery money would be better spent on essentials. They are the ones that make a difference in the last minute of the game when everything is on the line and you wouldn't want the ball in anyone else's hands.
Agreeing on all of that, a few beers later, a more pressing question came to light, who are you working for and would you pass them the ball with 3 seconds to go?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wanna buy a Tractor?
Second Life by Linden Labs is an online concept, virtual world, where you can be someone else, even another gender, while interacting with others via your perfect avatar. It was a forerunner of the Zynga online communities or digital escapes built by Marc Pincus, who has amassed a billion dollars and jumped into the Forbes rich list by selling bits of something worth nothing.
Nearly 300 million people pay money to live and tend the soil in Farmville while building houses and streets in Cityville. For those not happy with this serene online life, Pincus has also built a place where you can engage in criminal activities called Mafia Wars or shoot from the hip in Frontierville. Sure the game scenarios like Warcraft et al have never been far from the bank balance of designers but why are people buying seed to till the soil and wait for harvest season to come around?
Farmville and Cityville are the top two apps worldwide by participation and again it begs the question why? Are our lives so intense and stress filled that people require an outlet where they can accomplish things they could never achieve in real life or are people looking backward to a calmer time where it didn't matter what kind of phone you carried, car you drove or where you lived? Any way you look at it, it's not a cheap option with people spending hundreds of millions of dollars being somewhere else, being someone else and imagining different lives. Must make the libraries envious as books used to be that vehicle of escape in the "old days".
So does owning all this virtual stuff, along with hiring and interacting with virtual people get complicated and does it blur the edges of real life? You've paid a lot of money to own that house of a life time, filled it with the perfect furniture, including that 200cm flat screen TV and then added the ideal partner to live with, while you get chauffeured around in your top of the range German auto. How do you feel, satisfied, a high achiever and well and truly attached to your purchases? That question was recently asked when four virtual property owners in Second Life sued Linden Labs for giving them a false impression of actually owning their online properties.
So with lines blurred it's no wonder the virtual goods market in virtual worlds will pass the $2 billion mark this year. So what are you waiting for, get designing, surely you have something to offer the residents of the 'Villes. Even if it doesn't work in the real world it could attain new heights of efficiency in the virtual worlds. I have to think that Comair, which recently came in as the worst performing, on time airline in the US could achieve on time nirvana in Cityville while flying the skies of Farmville.
Maybe you could even fly that plane while having the flight attendants pander to your every desire. Then when you land, you race to the stadium and score the winning goal at the World Cup, while writing that best selling novel at half time and finishing off building the perfect app, everyone uses on their virtual phones before accepting the winning trophy.
Hmmmmm maybe there is something to this virtual world after all?
Nearly 300 million people pay money to live and tend the soil in Farmville while building houses and streets in Cityville. For those not happy with this serene online life, Pincus has also built a place where you can engage in criminal activities called Mafia Wars or shoot from the hip in Frontierville. Sure the game scenarios like Warcraft et al have never been far from the bank balance of designers but why are people buying seed to till the soil and wait for harvest season to come around?
Farmville and Cityville are the top two apps worldwide by participation and again it begs the question why? Are our lives so intense and stress filled that people require an outlet where they can accomplish things they could never achieve in real life or are people looking backward to a calmer time where it didn't matter what kind of phone you carried, car you drove or where you lived? Any way you look at it, it's not a cheap option with people spending hundreds of millions of dollars being somewhere else, being someone else and imagining different lives. Must make the libraries envious as books used to be that vehicle of escape in the "old days".
So does owning all this virtual stuff, along with hiring and interacting with virtual people get complicated and does it blur the edges of real life? You've paid a lot of money to own that house of a life time, filled it with the perfect furniture, including that 200cm flat screen TV and then added the ideal partner to live with, while you get chauffeured around in your top of the range German auto. How do you feel, satisfied, a high achiever and well and truly attached to your purchases? That question was recently asked when four virtual property owners in Second Life sued Linden Labs for giving them a false impression of actually owning their online properties.
So with lines blurred it's no wonder the virtual goods market in virtual worlds will pass the $2 billion mark this year. So what are you waiting for, get designing, surely you have something to offer the residents of the 'Villes. Even if it doesn't work in the real world it could attain new heights of efficiency in the virtual worlds. I have to think that Comair, which recently came in as the worst performing, on time airline in the US could achieve on time nirvana in Cityville while flying the skies of Farmville.
Maybe you could even fly that plane while having the flight attendants pander to your every desire. Then when you land, you race to the stadium and score the winning goal at the World Cup, while writing that best selling novel at half time and finishing off building the perfect app, everyone uses on their virtual phones before accepting the winning trophy.
Hmmmmm maybe there is something to this virtual world after all?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Keep on Truckin'.
Smile for the camera and hold up your purchase, say a few words about how fantastic a product it is and how glad you are, you bought this fantastic product. You've just "Hauled" and become part of the latest retail trend. To "Haul" means to upload video logs onto YouTube about all your purchases, where you bought them, what you thought of the service and the experience of the product itself.
For a boy from the 'Gong, haulage was a thousand coal trucks rumbling up and down the escarpment creating potholes that would make a Volkswagen disappear. Time marches on and the web starts reusing words for its own purpose and to "Haul" now has connotations of a different kind but still involving products, if not on the back of a semi trailer.
To "Haul" is certainly instant feedback for suppliers and some like Sephora in the US have stepped up and installed video cameras at registers so clients can "Haul" their product before leaving the store. This works especially well if the inshore experience has been great and with staff knowing they will get instant feedback the onus on service has increased dramatically.
So the online forum has just turned Hollywood with vignettes of purchases or "unboxing" downloaded to YouTube by the 1000's. How far this will spread is anyone's guess but as everything in social media seems to expand to obscene numbers it's likely a store near you will be asking you to "Haul" your products very soon. For product oriented industries this means another avenue of advertising, albeit one they may not have any control over.
Like everything else in social media it will be interesting if companies try to hijack this process for their own benefit? Like the accommodation places that tried to put their own spin on sites such as Trip Advisor, companies will look to "Haul" their own products via plants, not the green variety but people that look like real consumers, whatever that look is. How will they be found out, via bad acting or the social media grapevine that self polices forums and the like?
I personally look forward to the cameras being installed in my favourite Bunnings hardware store, so that I can look into them and with all sincerity talk about my in store experience and then gush about the new book shelf I'm going to build with my new power tool. "Tim the Toolman" will have nothing on me and it will get me on TV or at least TouTube.
So what will be the real motive to "Haul" your purchase, a great experience or self aggrandisement? Will people take any opportunity to be caught on camera with an opinion or will this be the next level of direct consumer feed back?
"Mr Spielberg I'm ready for my close up".
For a boy from the 'Gong, haulage was a thousand coal trucks rumbling up and down the escarpment creating potholes that would make a Volkswagen disappear. Time marches on and the web starts reusing words for its own purpose and to "Haul" now has connotations of a different kind but still involving products, if not on the back of a semi trailer.
To "Haul" is certainly instant feedback for suppliers and some like Sephora in the US have stepped up and installed video cameras at registers so clients can "Haul" their product before leaving the store. This works especially well if the inshore experience has been great and with staff knowing they will get instant feedback the onus on service has increased dramatically.
So the online forum has just turned Hollywood with vignettes of purchases or "unboxing" downloaded to YouTube by the 1000's. How far this will spread is anyone's guess but as everything in social media seems to expand to obscene numbers it's likely a store near you will be asking you to "Haul" your products very soon. For product oriented industries this means another avenue of advertising, albeit one they may not have any control over.
Like everything else in social media it will be interesting if companies try to hijack this process for their own benefit? Like the accommodation places that tried to put their own spin on sites such as Trip Advisor, companies will look to "Haul" their own products via plants, not the green variety but people that look like real consumers, whatever that look is. How will they be found out, via bad acting or the social media grapevine that self polices forums and the like?
I personally look forward to the cameras being installed in my favourite Bunnings hardware store, so that I can look into them and with all sincerity talk about my in store experience and then gush about the new book shelf I'm going to build with my new power tool. "Tim the Toolman" will have nothing on me and it will get me on TV or at least TouTube.
So what will be the real motive to "Haul" your purchase, a great experience or self aggrandisement? Will people take any opportunity to be caught on camera with an opinion or will this be the next level of direct consumer feed back?
"Mr Spielberg I'm ready for my close up".
Friday, April 8, 2011
Baguette? Oui.
As I write this, I look across the azure waters of the Mediterranean. Sorry I've always wanted to write that and I finally got the chance while attending a Global Forum in Nice. Interestingly, like most conferences and forums you see a lot of hotel facilities or in this case global head office facilities without getting to experience the location and all it has to offer.
Location aside most conferences and events could be held in any hotel anywhere in the world and have the same effect except for the people you meet. Working for a global technology company, the expectation for video conferencing and collective calls at all hours of the night can sometimes defuse the effectiveness of meeting face to face. As Seth Godin so succinctly phrased, "interact or stay home" could be the mantra for all conferences.
So you go to the conference because it's a chance to get away from work for a while, meet up with people you've only talked to on the phone and maybe get in a beer or two after some long days inside. Yet with the cost of putting together such events increasing by the oil barrel there needs to be value for all and expectations need to be met. To even have the remotest possibility of someone thinking their flight was a waste because this is what they saw and heard last year, denigrates the objective of the conference and basically renders it null and void or even worse, uninteresting.
With all the technology available today to stay connected a conference has the responsibility to bring people together for more than listening to speakers with scripted agendas. It's about arriving focused, engaged, enthusiastic and most of all willing to interact and if that isn't done then Seth has the above answer for you.
The best conferences are few and far between and for me have revolved around the excitement of being there, surprises from speakers, occasional drama, maybe some cool gifts but most of all relationships that give me the opportunity to stretch my thinking and help me to make a difference when I get back to the real world at work.
The days of the one armed blind mountain climber ( apology to any one armed blind climbers reading this, you know where I'm heading ) giving a motivational speech without relevance to the conference are long gone. Like the big speech before the grand finale, it only lasts for a very short time and then you have to play the game with all the skills learnt and the team mates backing you up. Relevance, building skills and finding that special person to make your work life easier should take precedence over anything else at a conference.
In the end a dazzling conference location is only a footnote at a dinner party if you are trying to impress your guests on your high flying corporate agenda. The relationships gained are the foundation upon which you build your network and "team mates" to win the big one.
Location aside most conferences and events could be held in any hotel anywhere in the world and have the same effect except for the people you meet. Working for a global technology company, the expectation for video conferencing and collective calls at all hours of the night can sometimes defuse the effectiveness of meeting face to face. As Seth Godin so succinctly phrased, "interact or stay home" could be the mantra for all conferences.
So you go to the conference because it's a chance to get away from work for a while, meet up with people you've only talked to on the phone and maybe get in a beer or two after some long days inside. Yet with the cost of putting together such events increasing by the oil barrel there needs to be value for all and expectations need to be met. To even have the remotest possibility of someone thinking their flight was a waste because this is what they saw and heard last year, denigrates the objective of the conference and basically renders it null and void or even worse, uninteresting.
With all the technology available today to stay connected a conference has the responsibility to bring people together for more than listening to speakers with scripted agendas. It's about arriving focused, engaged, enthusiastic and most of all willing to interact and if that isn't done then Seth has the above answer for you.
The best conferences are few and far between and for me have revolved around the excitement of being there, surprises from speakers, occasional drama, maybe some cool gifts but most of all relationships that give me the opportunity to stretch my thinking and help me to make a difference when I get back to the real world at work.
The days of the one armed blind mountain climber ( apology to any one armed blind climbers reading this, you know where I'm heading ) giving a motivational speech without relevance to the conference are long gone. Like the big speech before the grand finale, it only lasts for a very short time and then you have to play the game with all the skills learnt and the team mates backing you up. Relevance, building skills and finding that special person to make your work life easier should take precedence over anything else at a conference.
In the end a dazzling conference location is only a footnote at a dinner party if you are trying to impress your guests on your high flying corporate agenda. The relationships gained are the foundation upon which you build your network and "team mates" to win the big one.
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