{"id":1331,"date":"2008-04-28T19:34:41","date_gmt":"2008-04-29T01:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/?p=1331"},"modified":"2008-04-28T19:34:41","modified_gmt":"2008-04-29T01:34:41","slug":"conferences-need-lots-of-lounge-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2008\/04\/28\/conferences-need-lots-of-lounge-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Conferences Need Lots of Lounge Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Lazy<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI want to also take a second to thank the folks from Blogtropolus for putting on such a great blogger lounge, which rocked in comparison to the conference media center. They were great hosts and offered a robust wireless network as well as a lively lounge for the couple of days I was at the event. I actually met more people I wanted to see in that lounge than anywhere else at the conference. —Jeff Nolan on Web 2.0 Expo 2008<\/a><\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was talking with a client last week about one of their upcoming conferences, giving them tips, do’s and don’ts. As I go to a lot of conferences, they said, they wanted to get some input on what works and doesn’t.<\/p>\n

The point Jeff raises, which I passed along to this client and I try to tell other people on the topic, is right on: conferences suffer from a severe lack of places to simply hang out. Trying to find a good place to sit that has power outlets is always tough. (Wifi is a given, or should be.)<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why, but convention centers are usually not geared towards hanging out: they’re geared towards broadcasting and, worse, people using pen and paper. There’s rarely enough outlets and never enough chairs.<\/p>\n

Events like SXSW have done marginally well with hang out space. SAP TechEd events have done very well with setting up “club houses” – they even have espresso machines! At IBM’s Impact Event a few weeks ago, I was shocked to see that the MGM Grand conference center had built-in hanging out space – there were several areas that were just stocked with chairs and couches. EclipseCon has a nice, tabled out lounge area this year. barcamps, of course, do this exceedingly well as hanging out is the whole point of barcamp.<\/p>\n

\n\"MaxUp<\/a><\/p>\n

People at conferences want to – or should want to – hang out with other people and chat with them. Traveling to a conference can seem sort of silly if you’re just taking in a presentation, but it seems very helpful – and worth all the green hand-wringing about business travel<\/a> – if you can actually hang out and chat with people face-to-face.<\/p>\n

So there’s your #1 advice for making a better conference: setup lots of lounges in the hallway, dot the halls with them. Try to get vendors to sponsor them instead of paying for booths: “this moment of peace and enjoyment brought to you by Citrix.”<\/p>\n

Disclaimer:<\/b> SAP, Eclipse, Adobe, and IBM are clients.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: redmonkadvice<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Make sure to have lots of hang-out space at conferences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}