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Reflecting on BlogTalk Reloaded
The dust in my head settled a bit and it's time for me to actually reflect on what happened the last few days. First of all I had a good time, starting from meeting Sebastian, Anne, Jere and others Saturday during Barcamp, (lovely dinner and the last time during the week I had some decent veggies on my plate) and ending with the weirdest glass of wine and good conversations with Paolo, Monica, Matt, Thomas and Anne (again ;) ).
The BlogTalk conference was OK, but I've seen Ton being involved in figuring out the conference format and not much of the results of that discussion was implemented. A pity, and I feel disappointed for him. We started with an open formatted session, but lack of communication between Thomas, Jan and Ton left the session unfinished.
Most presenters didn't know about the format beforehand and apparantly some complained about the 10 minutes presentation, which made Thomas and Jan decide to stick with what they knew: presentations and Q+A..
To be frank, I think that a lot of people would have gotten more out of the conference if we would have continued the open formatted sessions. In the very first session of the day I picked up some interesting things during the conversations that would not have surfaced during Q+A..
During the two days of conference the format was completely confusing to me. There was no common understanding between the hosts during the presentations. So one presentor stuck to the initial 10 minutes, then the time was upped to 15 minutes and others took more time. Final disappointment was that our presentation was not directly followed by q+a but by the presentation on SIOC. Uncomparable stories and therefore the questions after both presentations were only focused on the last SIOC presentation.
I'm a person that likes to be engaged during an event such as BlogTalk. Disappointingly I didn't feel engaged this time, even though I was one of the presenters. To me the event was worthwhile for reconnecting with people I knew and the few new faces I added to my addres book.
I know that others, especially first timers, took a lot more from the conference than I did. I do want to thank Thomas and Jan for putting the thing together. In the end we wouldn't have met if they didn't make the effort.
Will there be another BlogTalk? I seriously doubt that. I think that at least the name should change (seeing that LesBlogs 3 will be about web 2.0 stuff I don't know why Loïc sticks to the name). To be attractive to the people that live and breathe social software we need to dig deeper than consuming presentations, half of which we've already heard somewhere. I know more people are digesting and contemplating a new way of connecting face-to-face. I know for sure that one day it will happen, even on a large scale.
Tags: blogtalk, blogtalkreloaded
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Elmine, thanks for your critical yet constructive feedback on the Blogtalk conference. I agree that there has been confusion on the presentation/q&a format which for some presenters led to less-than-satisfying discussions afterwards. I feel especially sorry that Your and Ton's presentation (right on the morning after the conference party) did not stimulate the conversations you had hoped for. As you rightly point out, the mixture of the more open way Ton organized his sessions, and the more formal plenary q&a other hosts sticked to was mainly due to suboptimal communication (together with diverging perspectives on the how-to) beforehand; that's definitely a lesson learned for me.
However, it is great to hear that you at least had the opportunity to (re)connect to people. I hope there will be more events to come (still looking forward to another BlogWalk ;-)) where we can continue discussions on social software etc.
