Conferences: bah humbug!

While we are on the subject of conferences (see below), please allow me a small plea for doing them in a different way.

The conference I went to yesterday followed the usual groove – a few (and some were good) plenary inputs early on followed by some ‘master classes’ (which if I am being honest were the presentational equivalents of ‘advertorials’) and then some more plenary presentations towards the end of the day. Meanwhile drinks and food were served and then you had the chance to network…

I put network in italics since such networking is a totally random affair. You happen to stand next to someone while reaching for a biscuit and strike up a conversation. I learnt one or two interesting things from these conversations yesterday (did you know part of Plymouth maternity hospital is officially designated part of Cornwall so that if a Cornish mum has to go there for specialist care her baby can still be born in Cornwall…?) but I would have liked to talk about the issues that mattered to me (see the blog post below for example) with others who shared that interest.

It seems to me that these conferences could be far more valuable if they had a parallel space for people to network in and talk about what they wanted to discuss. Borrowing on Open Space – I envisage a largish room where one wall people can post the issues they would like to discuss, a portion of the floor where they are going to be at what time, and then wait to see who turns up. It is not pure open space of course, but it would allow people to find each other as it were. All the other programmed seminars, talks, workshops can carry on too – but this parallel space would allow for something a little different.

On this basis the usual agenda can be published and used to justify people attending – but there would be an added extra – at minimal cost and maximal value. It would mean that people could not leave the event saying that they wish they had talked about ‘X’ since they would have had that chance…

I am going to suggest this to a few conference providers to see if they would like to install this into their events. Watch this space…

So if the next time you go to a standard ‘glossy’ event in London (like the one yesterday was) and you get the freeform opportunity to suggest a subject for discussion in a largish room with bits of paper stuck to the wall – remember you heard it here first! 


Perhaps we should call these Conference 2.0 ??