Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend Audience, a conference that should be the model for how tech conferences are handled. How so?
In the first words Loren said, he reminded people that there would be no open laptops during the show and no Twittering during the conference or “I’ll throw your ass out. I’m not even kidding.” At that moment the tone of the conference was set. Put down the tech, pick up the notebook and pen you were given, and be an audience, rather than a participant.
There’s no shame in being an audience.
That message carried through in a profound way throughout the conference with speakers ranging from Frank Roche who handles HR for companies with thousands and thousands of employees and how they reach their audience, in this case employees, to Melanie Notkin who had a stroke of brilliance and turned it into a massive success, a website called Savvy Auntie.
Incidentally, I picked these two because Frank, who’s a friend of mine to begin with, and Melanie and I had an awesome conversation about new media, Twitter, blogging, marketing, and PR people during the conference lunch. It definitely rang, to me, as the highlight of the entire day.
Frank, before lunch, talked about HR and how companies have to perceive their employees as an audience, and treat them with honesty and respect. Frankly, that aspect of HR is often couched in wishy washy bull that barely ever resembles the truth, and this is the part of HR Frank is most interested in changing. The core message? If you want your people to believe you, stop lying to them. Tell them the truth and treat them like adults. How about that, huh?
Melanie Notkin’s talk was also amazing, and could very easily have been titled “Don’t fear the niche.” While talking to friends, she had a vision for a site and a community that could guide people to being better Aunts and Uncles when they don’t necessarily have kids of their own. Imagine that! If you want to talk about niches, that’s a niche. And yet shortly after launch, the advertising started coming in from companies who had been wanting to reach that niche and had no way to do it. Today, Savvy Auntie is a massive success, mostly because of the incredible talent behind the marketing department (defined as 5′ tall and 100 pounds) and filling a role and a niche that had, beforehand, gone unnoticed, and an audience for a new kind of “parenting” site was born.
Other highlights included listening to the brilliant and oft mistakenly maligned Andrew Keene who spoke about how people seem to be confused about the difference between having the ability to publish their content and reach an audience, and the talent they need to do it (or the lack thereof). The beauty of Andrew Keene is that he gets under the skin of people like Robert Scoble and his ilk, and the more you listen to Keene, the more you realize that he’s actually a man with a serious message. Essentially, after every “revolution,” the ones revolting become the new elite. In a sense, in this new “community driven” land of the lost, people like Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington and Dave Winer have become the new elite. The paragons of egalitarianism have become the elite and, in some cases, the oppressors.
Fascinating stuff, and the parallels he drew made me realize that my own meandering thoughts (which match his in this instance) aren’t that far from reality. Either that, or Keene and I are both nucking futs.
Rachel Marsden, really got me with one line: “If you think you’re going to decide to run for office and base your whole campaign around social media, drop out now.” She went on to explain how social media (Twitter in particular) shouldn’t be used to just blast out spammy headlines to supporters, but how one politician in France used it to put a squash down on a scandal that was brewing. When you think about it, politicians in general don’t notice stuff like that; instead they think they have to share every minor headline with their social media outlets rather than using them for what they’re good at: speed.
I could probably go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point.
It’s no secret that Loren Feldman and I have been friends for a long time, but he and Anton Mannering put on a conference that should be the model for conferences in the future. Put the tech away. Put the phone down. Put the Blackberry and iPhone in the pocket. Forget the WiFi, the backchannel, the IRC, and all that other stupidity. Just come. Listen. Learn. Let really brilliant people speak about what they know about. Instead of a harried crazy frantic networking day, kick back and enjoy it. Mellow out. Take it all in.
In other words, be an audience because there’s no shame in that and you just might learn something.
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