Comments on: I Still Don’t Get the Blogger Conference Thing

By: jim

jim — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 02:34:00 +0000

BloggerCon was free. Check out SXSW Interactive in Austin sometime. The usual suspects are there and you will pay for the privilege to attend. Think of BloggerCon as a “users group” rather than a vendor supported conference and it makes more sense. This is a very non-commerical conference which attempts to lock out the vendors from product pimping. If more companies paid for employees to attend non-commercial conferences they would have a competitive advantage. Listening to occasionally wise people speak for free (streamcast) is always a good investment. All was donated to bring the conference together. That is what community is all about.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:12:00 +0000

I think one distillation of what you said is: can things that aren’t a business have a conference? I’d have to say, sure, why not? People are passionate about their hobbies and want to meet people with similar interests face to face. As you point out, lots of things that make life sweet and meaningful have no business model.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:34:00 +0000

One thing you’re slightly missing, is that many of the attendees real jobs are in marketing, punditry, or tech investing. So they *are* there for their jobs, they’re trying to build businesses from the topic. Some businesses are:1) Selling companies on why they need to have blogs, and should hire you to run them (say “conversation” a lot).2) Running vanity press services off of frustrated writer-wannabees (say “reach the world” a lot).3) Positioning yourself as a management consultant about market shifts (say “disruptive!” a lot).4) Doing the pundit circuit about it all (say “people-power” a lot).This list isn’t exhaustive. But it does cover the business models of quite a few present at the conference.

By: BuddyBuilder

BuddyBuilder — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:53:00 +0000

Blogging is a business to Six Apart and Blogger.com. But okay, that’s rare.Since you use it to figure out your camera, even though Nikon isn’t in the blogging business, it will affect they way they communicate with the world or the way the world communicates about their products.So while very few businesses would justify sending an employee to a conference, they had better well understand the impact blogging will have on their public relations.This is a dumb example, but teamwork and management isn’t a business, but corporations spend tons sending managers around to conferences that supposedly help their employees gain these skills.It’s early for that with blogging perhaps, but we already see it creeping into PR and customer service.The telephone isn’t a business for anyone but the phone company, but it is essential for doing business for the vast majority of us.