Will a typical analyst have the patience to watch five hours of pre-recorded videos? Not likely. I might listen to a video that I am particularly interested in (like cloud computing or service oriented architectures, for example). But I will not listen to all the presentations. There are simply too many distractions and too many things to do. That is the reality of my life as a researcher, analyst, and writer. The reality is that unless you present compelling presentations with information that draws me in you will not capture my attention for long periods of time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stat. On the other hand, I don’t like going to keynotes and sitting there for two hours. All tech vendors err on the side of WAY too much information in keynotes. These days I like to follow the example of my colleague Cote, and watch the keynote from the hotel room, where the net connection is assured, and my twitter community is with me. Canned video suits me pretty well.<\/p>\n
Interestingly enough Cisco this week used telepresence tools for some presentations from Corp. (it ran a half day face to face event and a second day purely virtual) and honestly, at least one of these might as well have been a video. Some speakers were reading from scripts, and it showed. No eye contact.<\/p>\n
Frankly, boring content or boring speakers are going to suck whatever the context.<\/p>\n
1. Virtual conferences need really good planning and execution. It cannot simply be a disconnected voice with some slides on a shared screen. That is called a conference call.<\/p>\n
2. Streaming or live video is wonderful but it needs to have the technology foundation so that it will work no matter what the customer\/participant\u2019s environment happens to be.<\/p>\n
3. If virtual conferences are to work they have to be conferences.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that we have good models for executing virtual conferences that work. They need to be electric, informative, and have interactivity.\u00a0 Right now the virtual meeting is not a true model. It is simply old execution applied to a new idea.<\/p>\n
I think that we will see the emergence of a true virtual conferencing model. I can\u2019t tell you that I can visualize a virtual conference that I would enjoy. Like many analysts, I am not good at passively sitting and watching. I need to be engaged and part of the action. I am not sure how you do this virtually. But I am ready to be surprised and delighted since it would be great not to get on an airplane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All in all though this was a first time for both Cisco and Microsoft, so of course you’re going to get teething problems.\u00a0 And I am looking forward to seeing Robb Mapp, from Microsoft analyst relations face to face when he visits London in a couple of weeks. I will buy him a pint.\u00a0 One thing you can’t do virtually is share a beer.<\/p>\n
disclosure: Microsoft is a client. I did drink beer during its event, after six pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Really not sure how it got to Friday with no blogs posted yet this week. I blame analyst conferences! \ud83d\ude09 But I wanted to get some thoughts down about the future of these events. In the last two weeks Cisco and Microsoft have both run events for analysts designed to minimise travel budgets. Welcome side<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[409,99,425],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ar","tag-ar","tag-cisco","tag-microsoft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wfjh-xn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}