Three Years ago we wrote a long post on why we need better events. Please take a moment to re-read it before we continue. We’ll wait.
I SAID WE WILL WAIT. NOW GO BACK AND READ IT!
For those of you who didn’t follow instructions, here was the jist:
Most of today’s big events are a complete waste of time and money for practitioners and vendors alike!
For vendors, they are paying 50K to 100K with no guarantee of getting a single good lead that will turn into a sale, especially since if they can only afford the cheap booth, they are in a corner behind a pillar far from the main door/refreshment area and no one will find them. There are efforts that start at 1/10 the cost that have a better chance of getting real leads.
For practitioners, they’re spending 10K+ for a “working” vacation where they aren’t learning anything and coming back more tired and less energized than when they left. For organizations sending a small team, they can get a much better ROI with other efforts.
At the end of the day, the only people who get value from these events are:
- Consultants who just pay an attendee fee and spend all their time focussed on vendors that might help them send their services and engaging Directors/CPOs to sell themselves for projects
- Organizers who make a very tidy profit off of a valueless event they lure you too based on hype, not value
The answer we gave at the time was that we needed events that were:
- Focused – relevant problem or tech
- Balance – more practitioners than vendor reps, preferably at least 3:1
- Size – small: 50 to 500 depending on focus and balance and vendor participation
And that’s still the core but today, more than ever, we also need:
- Tech Ed: not just what tech can do, but what processes you need to drive it, what skill level you need to use it, how to select it, and, most importantly, how to assess readiness and realistic implementation timelines (unless you want to join the 88% failure club [94% if AI])
- AI Ed & Hype Busting: enough panels with a bunch of clueless C-Suite Executives with less TQ than your pre-schooler sitting around making fantastic claims about what their AI is going to do in the future if you just buy it today; real education from real PhDs who spent years building and studying the tech who will truthfully tell you what it can do, what it can’t do, and, most importantly, in the age of Gen-AI what it’s accuracy/success rate really is, especially if your data is cr@p
- Situational Awareness and Practical Advice: you can’t ignore geo-politics anymore — the time of free trade is over, rules are changing by the day, risks are at an all time high, and the economics that once defined your global supply chain are crashing and burning; events need to be focussed on not just a tech or problem, but market size and geography and/or organizational profile so that attendees can attend talks by appropriately invited lectures with current real-world insight who can give practical advice and make your 10K+ worth it!
We’ll end the rant here for today, but we’re not done. It’s your money, and you should demand better!