My take on the Utah bloggers conference
A lot of you know that I dont beat around the bush very much. I pretty much tell it like I see it. So…
I thought the event was a great idea. I thought most of it was well executed.
I had one complaint.
When you invite a very experienced, and for the most part, a highly technical, audience to a conference about blogging, and then you talk about
- what a blog is
- how to start a blog
- what software is best for a blog
- what technorati is
you alienate your main audience.
If your audience for this conference was to get new people blogging…great.
Otherwise, I don’t see a point for me to go to the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that, except for networking (which…isn’t a bad reason to be at the conference itself).
It seems to me that the event would be better served talking more about advanced blogging “stuff” so that the bloggers who really improve the “network” get something out of it.
Other than that, Ryan and Phil did a great job.
It’s always good to hear Phil speak. and I didn’t know that the founder of the most worshipped isp in utah is now running for the US Senate. No wonder he looked so geeky. He’s a linux geek!
I thought it was good of Phil Burns to offer his seat on the panel to Paul Allen. I thought Paul should have taken it. I mean, I’d bet that over half that room is blogging because of Paul.
June 14th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Good point.
June 14th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
They didn’t define the audience. It seemed to be to any Utah Blogger, which is exactly what they got. I thought they wanted to network and create community.
Perhaps they should define it to be experienced business, technical, or political bloggers. Obviously there is a segment that just wants to know more about blogging. With a longer conference they can accomodate both. It just depends on what they’re going for.
Janet
June 15th, 2006 at 8:11 am
Janet, you’re right. The problem with doing this is that now I don’t want to go to the next one because the only thing in it for me is networking. I didn’t get anything out of the panel.
June 17th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Coming from the perspective of a prospective-blogger, I thought
the conference was very informative and interesting. For organizing and
hosting the first bloggers conference in Utah, I think you are being
overly critical of the event.
Alan
June 17th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Thank you for saying everything I didn’t. And, yes, Paul Allen is the only reason I knew of the converence.
June 17th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Alan,
That’s exactly my point. As an experienced blogger, I didn’t think the event was targeted at me. The discussion was aimed at new bloggers.
Because of this, I’d be leery of going to the next event.
If you’re going to organize an event for bloggers, I think you would want to cater to the bloggers who have been doing it for a while and who are likely to continue to do it.
The mavens.
The connectors.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:07 am
I was really glad to see just how many UT bloggers were willing to turn out. Events like this are never sold on the panel but on the ability to network and meet. For my four blogs worth, I thought it was a great event for a first try.
June 25th, 2006 at 2:51 am
I agree, the conference targeted bloggers and then illogically spoke about how to start blogging. For me, after hearing that so many people used WordPress, I used the time to switch my blog software, so not all was lost!