Snapshot Chronicles

Susan Getgood's personal blog

Understanding conferences & trade shows (thoughts post-BlogHer, part 2)

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Originally I was going to address the somewhat self-serving BlogWorld Expo post comparing BlogWord Expo and BlogHer, but it’s been a month, and pretty much everything that can be, has been  said, argued, analyzed, attacked and defended.

I thought it would be far more productive to talk a little about trade shows and conferences. What can we expect to get from attending an event? And how do we decide which one is the right one for us?

First, we have to step into the WABAC Machine and get a little historical perspective.

Trade shows started as a way for manufacturers in various industries to display their wares to  “the trade” or industry — essentially a focused copy of the village market. That could mean everything from component parts and machinery for  industrial buyers to  finished good manufacturers exhibiting clothing and housewares for the department store buyers. And everything in between. Every industry has its major shows, both in the US and across the globe.

Trade shows are business events. There is an industry trade show for just about everything. Often they are restricted to adults 18 and over. With the addition of a conference portion, they also serve as educational opportunities (of varying quality) within industries. Many industries also have educational and professional conferences that do not have an expo component or a blend of both.

Consumer shows also have their inspiration in the village market, but instead of an industry focus, they are constructed around consumer goods – homes, boats, cars, jewelry, even crafts and hobbies, and exhibitors display finished goods or services in a category to consumer buyers. Home shows. Car shows. Boat shows. Flower shows. Where you might find only one or two industry trade shows in a country — or even the world– for a specific industry, consumer shows are often regional, even hyperlocal. Because they are largely viewed as family or leisure time events — for example, the family stepping out to dream about the boat they want to own or their dream house — typically there isn’t a conference component. Even if Mom and Dad would like to attend an educational presentation about the latest in boat technology, Junior probably doesn’t have the patience to sit through it.

Technology products respected this division between trade and consumer. Until the rise of personal technology. The best example of this is probably Macworld Expo, the first industry trade show (in my recollection) with clearly strong fan boy (and girl) components. More broadly, we have CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, a trade event that is a geek’s winter wet dream, and Comic-Con, the geek’s ultimate summer love. Both are industry events but they have acknowledged consumer audiences.

Another important characteristic of trade events, versus consumer events, is that networking and business connections are as  important as the conference and expo itself. Sometimes more. New business development. Connecting with colleagues from other regions. And yes, partying. Just think on the saying: What happens in Vega, stays in Vegas.

The personal and the professional

Blogging mixes the personal and professional. It’s no surprise that blogging conferences do as well. Making it difficult to class its shows and conferences as one or the other. However, I think it is critical to understand that the presence of the personal —  human connections, social aspects, even the swag bags — does not mean that a blogging conference is not professional. That is a false dichotomy.

We all have more than one identity and there is no reason we have to firewall one from the other when we are engaged in a professional endeavor. Like blogging. In fact, I’ll make it personal. If you know me professionally, there is no reason to treat me differently, or value me less, if you happen to encounter me when I am with my son.

If you do? Seriously, shame on you. I’m more than fine with asking people to check their egos at the door. But don’t ask them to check their identities. Especially at a blogging conference.

What blogging conferences should you attend?

Okay. Now that I have hopefully disposed of the idea that social and community aspects of conferences are less important than the content, and you are all on board with the idea that blogging conferences by definition MUST meld the personal with the professional, how do you decide which blogging conference is for you?

Here are some factors to consider:

  1. Don’t make your decision based on the expo floor. The expo is part of the revenue model, but it is far more like the consumer show than a top trade event like CES where the latest technology will be on display. You want tech, go to CES, not a Podcamp or BlogWorld Expo.
  2. If you are a newbie, do not go to any conference expecting to learn how to blog. Go to make friends and participate in the community of your choice, but you won’t get an adequate Blogging 101 at ANY conference. Because the best way to learn how to blog is to blog; if you want a step-by-step guide along the way, you will save a lot of money if you buy a book like Professional Blogging For Dummies (my book, affiliate link) or go to a local community college or VoTech hands-on class. If you want the teaching, save your conference dollars for when you are a little more advanced and can benefit from the trend and best practices sessions that tend to be the meatiest ones at conferences.
  3. Look at the conference holistically. It is the sessions plus the networking pus the social aspects plus the expo that make a conference experience. Some of the things to look at:
  • The speaker roster. Does it include people you want to learn from? Speaking on topics that appeal to you?
  • The experiences of attendees from previous years.
  • Networking opportunities.

And here’s my advice. If you are a member of the women’s blogging community, you should attend BlogHer at least once. It is the first and grand-mama of them all. Without BlogHer forging the way, it is highly unlikely that the smaller niche women’s blogging conference would exist: Blissdom, Type-A Mom, Blogalicious or Mom 2.0. Or even BlogWorld Expo. A little secret: the founders of ALL those conferences were at BlogHer this and previous years. Not an accident.

But don’t worry. If you don’t want to attend BlogHer, there are probably 5 women in the community to take your hypothetical seat. If you prefer smaller, stay home in August and attend one of the niche conferences instead. You’ll be more comfortable and get more out of your experience. Here’s a quick differentiation of some of the top ones —

  • Blissdom – for members of the Blissdom community founded by Alli Worthington
  • Type-A Mom – focuses on professional mom blogging
  • Blogalicious  – a community for women of color
  • Mom 2.0 – more focused on the relationships between bloggers and marketers. Some of the sessions are equaLLY aimed at marketers who want to reach mom bloggers.

If your interests lie more to the technology and mechanics of blogging, there’s  BlogWorld Expo, Gnomedex, Jeff Pulver’s 140 Twitter conferences, PodCamp, WordCamp. Camp Rock.

Oops sorry. Been watching too much Mouse with my kid.

Make your choice to attend based on your objectives and how well the conference seems to deliver to your needs. And if it doesn’t measure up afterward? Think long and hard about whether it’s the conference that didn’t deliver on its promises, or did you simply make the wrong choice?

Make a different one next year.

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Thoughts post-BlogHer 2010, part one

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BlogHer 2010. Maybe the best since the very first in 2005.

I’ve been writing a series on Marketing Roadmaps on the marketing lessons from BlogHer ’10 so I am not going to cover too much of that here. I’m also not going to go into a terrible amount of detail about my experiences at BlogHer. Let’s leave it at this: I had a great time, enjoyed seeing so many friends and colleagues, wish I hadn’t missed some folks and had more time with others, and was thrilled with both the attendance and the conversation at the two panels I was part of and with the reception everyone gave to Professional Blogging For Dummies. I adored showing bloggers interviewed for the book where their story appears.

Instead, in this series of posts, I’m going to share my thoughts on the evolution of the BlogHer community & conference. I’ve attended every main BlogHer conference since the first one in 2005, and that puts me in a fairly small group along with the founders Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardins & Elisa Camahort Page, Maria Niles, Celeste Lindell and a few others. My thoughts here are a continuation of the walk down memory lane post I wrote before BlogHer.

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2,400 people. Mostly women. That’s the audience that over the period August 3-8th occupied the New York Hilton. And I use the verb occupy intentionally. It was an army of bloggers,  none of whom needed you to explain what a blog is or why one might want to have one.

That however was possibly the ONLY thing that everyone had in common. BlogHer is a diverse community — even if the media persist in categorizing all women bloggers as mom bloggers.

The women, and (mostly) enlightened men, who participate in the BlogHer community write about everything under the sun. And moon. Families, food, film, photography, politics, pop culture, marketing, media,motherhood, technology, racism, gender… The list goes on.

A diverse community creates a diverse agenda. Some bloggers want to monetize. Some want to write better. Some are looking for a job. It’s entirely possible that an attendee only attends 1 or 2 breakouts because those are simply the ones that interest her. And, yes, some come simply for the social and brand activities.

In my earlier post, I said that I thought the community was undergoing an evolution but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.  I can now.

I think the BlogHer community is comprised of three basic groups, each of which comes to the community, and the conference, with a very different agenda.

Post-graduates: These are women who have been blogging for 3 or 4 (or more) years.  The first wave. Some had personal websites  or were active on BBS and forum sites. They come to BlogHer to speak, to share their experience, to support their friends and colleagues and to network. Unless they are at a crossroads — for example, looking for a new job  — they aren’t going to learn a lot at the sessions. BlogHer is about connecting and sharing their knowledge with others. Much of your A-list (though I hate this term) is in this group. The challenge: how to keep them engaged even as they need, or perceive they need, the support of the BlogHer organization less and less? How to give them what they need so we as a whole do not lose the benefit of their contributions.

Sophomores, juniors and seniors: These bloggers have been writing for a couple years. They’ve started to hit their stride. If they work with brands, they are beginning to build the relationships they need to “graduate,” but BlogHer is an important opportunity to connect with companies and surface new opportunities. This group has always seemed to be the most active segment of the BlogHer community, and I think gets the most out of the breakout sessions at the conference as well as the brand events, both official and off-site unofficial events. Remember: Today’s A-listers were sophomores in 2006 and 2007. Danger: This group may be seduced to spend more time at the unofficial brand events in order to make those all important connections. How do we keep them at the conference? Do we?

First year: These are the newbies. They’ve been blogging for less than a year, or perhaps they haven’t even started yet. They come to a conference hungry for information at the most basic level, but it’s a mistake to assume that they aren’t also interested in more advanced topics. Just because they are new to blogging doesn’t mean they are complete novices. They may have years of life or business experience that they can apply to their blogging. And they may not. This is the group best served by intro-level content. A potential issue: It’s entirely possible that there isn’t enough intro content to meet the demand. This year, I heard there were more newbies than ever before. I’ll be very interested in their assessment of the conference, both the sessions and the overall value of the connection with the community.

Because that’s the most important characteristic of BlogHer. It’s not just a bunch of sessions glued together by a ticket. BlogHer is a conference where bloggers come to learn from each other as much as from the speakers. This is very different than the typical industry conference, where the knowledge is dispensed by putative experts to the eager masses. At BlogHer, anyone can aspire to be a speaker, and you may learn as much in a cab as you do in all the sessions.

Nevertheless, the conference agenda should offer something for everyone. I know for a fact that achieving this balance has been a goal of the organizers from the very beginning. So, the challange is: what to do next year to meet the needs of these three groups, which co-mingle at parties, receptions and general sessions, but which have very different educational needs?

I don’t have an answer, but I have some thoughts.

For the post-graduates: A few years ago, BlogHer experimented with the “unconference” format. I honestly think that format is too unstructured to fit the community as it has evolved, however, I think the idea of roundtables around key issues like ethics, brand-blogger relationships, the future of journalism, etc. might have some legs. More than birds of a feather, but not as intense (or as unstructured) as the unconference format.

For the first years: Mentors. Don’t ask me how this would work, because I haven’t thought it through yet, but over and over, I hear people talking about their mentors. The bloggers that shared their knowledge and expertise to help someone else get established. There has to be a way to offer that through the BlogHer community in a more organized (but flexible) way.

And now to the sophomores, juniors and seniors: This is the population that needs to feel it has an opportunity to be an active part of the agenda. But many of them have no speaking experience and may not want to speak to groups of 50 – 100 — 1000.  Involving them in a mentor program is one idea. More importantly though, is answering the question: what will keep them on-site and not off at unofficial brand events. Or sightseeing. Does it make sense to suck it up and acknowledge that people will go offsite and build that into the agenda? Perhaps with an official sightseeing trip that will rock their socks and provide killer competition for all the unofficial events that will cram into the same time slot? Next year’s location offers plenty of opportunities to do something like this. San Diego’s Wild Animal Park in Escondido. The Gaslight District.

I don’t have the answers. But, our feedback as members of the community can help provide the answers, so speak up and ask for what you want from BlogHer — the community and the conference. You may not get everything you want, but it’s guaranteed that you will not if you say nothing.

In my next post, I’ll share my thoughts on the Blogworld Expo blog post about BlogHer. Here’s a preview:

I  have been attending high tech industry conferences since the early 80s. Yup, I am that old. And they are all the same to some degree. The sessions and the expo are 2/3 (or less) of the experience. The networking, parties and business meetings are just as important as the putative reason for being there — the conference. BlogHer, and Blogworld Expo, are no different.

For my part though, I’ve reached the age where a little baby spit-up is preferable to a 20-something drunk vomiting on my shoes in the cab line.

Just saying.