Headshift: Smarter, Simpler, Social

What other conferences can learn from Reboot

June 13, 2007 :: by Lee 5 responses  

This year's Reboot 9.0 event in Copenhagen was wonderfully calm and enjoyable, with more nice people and good conversation than anywhere else I know. It struck a good balance between its twelve (count em'!) spaces, and I think also between its various themes, loosely united under the 'Human?' title. Thomas, Nikolai et al have facilitated a wonderful and fascinating network around the event - next year will be its OS X presumably ;-) - but despite its history, the conference does not feel at all formulaic. Reboot also deserves some credit for two other European conferences, LIFT and SHIFT - this year's LIFT conference, organised by Laurent and his team, was also a highlight of my travel itinerary this year, and not just because mine was the highest rated presentation of the conference, even coming in ahead of Sugatra Mitra - surely some mistake. Users, eh? ;-)

But the problem is that when you come back from Reboot, all other conferences suffer by comparison; however, I think there are some lessons that other events can learn from Reboot and LIFT that might help them improve.

I am currently heading to Milan for the Web 2.Oltre conference organised by Emanuele Quintarelli from RBI, and as this is the first major Enterprise 2.0 event in Italy (AFAIK), it should be interesting. Dion Hinchcliffe, Jeff Nolan and Paolo Valdermarin will all be there too, which is a bonus. It will be interesting to see how this compares to similar UK business-focused events.

Last week, I spoke at the VNU Blogs and Social Media Forum, which is one of the bigger of the UK business-focused social software conferences. I enjoyed it, met some good friends, and I think the organisers did a really good job. But if they are to build on this and create something that is both sustainable and desirable, then I think there are several lessons from Reboot that could help for next year. Next month, I am looking forward to the Unicom Social tools seminar, which seems to have some good content, but I still think the format could be brighter and more engaging.

There is something about UK business-focused conferences that always leaves me slightly cold. It is partly cultural, in the sense that British people tend to need the presence of other cultures (or alcohol) to really relax and socialise in a non-cliquey way. The best evidence of this is the massive annual pilgrimage of Brits to ETECH in California, where for 3 days we/they mingle, laugh and let down their guard, before returning to their cliques for the rest of the year. There are too many Brits who I only meet and talk to in other countries, which is a bit weird.

There is also, I think, a misconception of the behaviours and needs of business people at conferences. In my experience, it is only in clipart libraries that business people just wear suits, shake hands and point at spreadhseets on a screen. In reality, they are much more rounded and interesting than that and, like everybody else, they crave authentic connection with other people, new thinking and inspiration. When I mentioned this to a colleague at the Blogs and Social Tools forum, they suggested maybe these people were not ready for the Reboot experience. I think not. When I arrived, I met one very talented and thoughtful colleague gnashing his teeth because he felt the experience thus far was so stilted and polite. Yet he is exactly the sort of participant any conference needs. By the time the utterly pointless sponsor panel (no offence to the panelists, some of whom are smart cookies, but the only theme that linked their talks was the fact they had all paid to be on stage), I think he probably needed dentures.

Second, I think we suffer from having a well-established conference organising industry for whom conferences are conceived in spreadsheets, not in the heart, whereas Reboot, LIFT and even the O'Reilly events in the USA are led by people who care passionately about the subject of the event. I think Reboot and similar European conferences also benefit from being non-commercial in the conventional sense. Events like Interesting 2007, which I will sadly miss, and Hack Day at Alexandra Palace, and indeed even the semi-shambolic NotCon events of a few years ago are all a better model to build on, and I hope business conference organisers will take a few leaves from their book. I have not been to FOWA, but the early ones look like they also had a great vibe.

Techniques like Open Space are sometimes helpful, but they too adopt the host culture of the event they are part of, which can sometimes result in partial, tentative half conversations instead of the intense debate, dialogue and challenge I seem to crave. I admire Johnnie Moore (I bet he doesn't believe me!) for putting his ego on the line in his Open Space events as a sacrifical lamb to get the party going, but even then I often sense there are a lack of meaningful drivers that stimulate people to engage. Perhaps I just went to too many noisy and argumentative political meetings as a youngster.

So, having moaned too often without helping fix the problem, here are my respectful suggestions for better events:

Passion

My Reboot talk this year was emotionally draining, because it drew on a case study that is very personal, as Lilia can attest after watching me inhale a beer (before lunch!) after it ended. More on that later when the Reboot videos are available. But other sessions too had their fair share of passion, belief and personal engagement.

Too many conferences seem to believe that because they are 'for business' they are expected to be drab affairs with no passion or engagement. As Euan might say, they are full of people trying deperately to pretend how grown up they are ;-) It is not enough to intersperse boring powerpoint presentations with speed networking or an open space session, because if the atmosphere is subdued and polite to start with, then these sessions will be stilted and awkward.

We must idenity, generate and tap into peoples' passions.

Real needs

A paid junket to a nice hotel in London is motivation enough to get there, but not necessarily to engage with people once you get there. How can we tap into real needs and real outcomes for events? One need that good conferences fulfil is the need to connect, network and make friends. In that case, the design and atmosphere of the conference should encourage this. I meet a lot of people who are driven by a need to really investigate and questions existing practice and case studies of what others are doing. In this case, really encourage people to tear apart case studies presented by people like me - really delve into what worked and what didn't work, rather than let us get away with telling participants how clever we (think we) are. Perhaps also build on the speed demo / showcase format that some Web 2.0 conferences use to let a lot of startups share their wares.

Other needs are more basic, and the absence of any one of these is a cardinal sin:
* free, open WiFi
* good coffee
* plentiful water
* imaginitive snacks (LeWeb3 set the bar very high in this respect)

What other needs can events tap into? Perhaps the blogwalk / city break idea is one possibility - let people walk, talk and learn about a city as part of the experience. Any other ideas?

Physical space

The Keddelhallen in Copenhagen is a great venue for a conference. It has a large main space that allows people to drift in and out, plus a more intimate small hall and the elongated Box upstairs. But the common meeting and eating space adjacent to the main hall is really the centre of gravity, as this is where people bump into each other. Outside, there is an area with tables and chairs and then the wonderfully social grass area where I sent most of my time this year hanging out with people and shooting the breeze.

This year's LIFT also had a great venue, with a large main hall, small hall and loads of space for meeting, bumping into people and plenty of room for some stimulating art installations.

London is a tough place to find such spacious and multi-purpose spaces for conferences, but we must find an alternative to the dreary, stilted hotel venues that most organisers choose. Why pay over the odds for such basic, boring spaces when nobody particularly likes them? Any conference organiser who can break out of this pattern will get my vote.

People

People are people. Even business people are people. They have hopes, dreams and passion. I know Harley-riding librarians, ultra-marathon running developers and Opera singing grocers. We all have hidden depths (if anyone finds mine, I will sue for mental harm ;-) and we all have things that make us laugh or cry. There is something about the connections I make at memorable conferences that are lasting and meaningful. On the way to and from Reboot it is easy to spot fellow participants because they help each other. The random stranger who selflessly gave up a power socket in Stansted turned out to be Jeremy Keith, who is lovely, and when my phone died in Copenhagen airport, Charlie Schick from Nokia appeared out of nowhere and gave me a fresh battery.

A rich mix of business people, technologists, social activists, writers, academics and enthusiastic amatuers always seems to make for a richer conversation. If I were to organise a conference, I would try to get that mix right, even if it meant giving away places to people who might not otherwise come. Ideally, a rich cultural and gender mix is a big benefit too, though this is harder to engineer without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I always learn so much from people who do not share my own cultural background that I benefit regardless of the quality of the presentations.

Objects

At Reboot 7.0, I sat next to Jyri Engestrom as he prepared his Object-based Sociality talk late at night, and then watched as he put this idea into action during his talk by throwing a beachball into the audience. Over the next year or so, he went on to manifest this idea in the wonderful service that is Jaiku. This has taught me that people can often begin a conversation centred around an object more easily and openly than they can begin a direct dialogue between themselves. The rise of Flickr, Youtube and other social media sites attest to this phenomenon.

LIFT used this approach with its portrait photography and print plotters. Reboot this year had blimps, but probably the most popular object-as-conversation-starter was human: the kids. There was organised childcare for the older ones, but the very young ones clung to their parents as countless participants (myself included) overwhelmed them with attention. I have enjoyed takng my own kids to ETECH and recently LIFT, so it was great to see kids accepted as mainstream participants at Reboot.

There must be a myriad of ways that commercial conference organisers could think of using object-based sociality to generate a flow of conversation and help break the ice at the events they manage. Any ideas?

Of course, it is easy to offer advice and critique from the sidelines, and having organised a big conference once myself, I know how hard it is. I should add that Headshift have also been guilty of organising an event at a Hotel with overpriced wine and bad WiFi, so I know how hard it is to avoid this mode in London. But if I am to continue attending so many conferences, then either the UK events get better or I get more selective, but I really think we need to raise our game if we are to see the kind of rich social networks emerge from the UK event circuit that we are seeing on a European level.

What do you think?

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