Corporate Conference Blogging

Now here’s a topic near and dear to everyone’s heart!! Since everyone is in the midst of running between events, conferences, etc I thought I would comment on it.

What am I talking about you ask? Well…A lot of people talk about the topic of conference blogging and there seems to be a large disconnect between which conferences are cool enough to blog about and which ones are not. In a way, this has a lot to do with the culture of the company or conference organizer (media, organization, etc). The more hip organization cultures seem to be with it and attract bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, and usually Robert Scoble podtech….the not so hip (although equally or more interesting) don’t attract these types to their conferences….now are organizations that blog hip (or smart enough with marketing/pr) to wag the blog’s long tail and get social mediaists to show up?.

…perhaps you read my small observations on a company I know that recently entered the blogosphere. They seem to have acquired a wealth of knowledge quickly (both internally and through acquisitions). It will be interesting to see if they want to, try to, or can pull off a successful blog presence at their upcoming conference in May…..now why would they do something like that? Well, it is the best way to involve the less fortunate non-attendees (you know, the ones not making purchasing decisions this year….or didn’t just make a purchase last year)…..the ones who will remember you in two or three years when the budget is approved….

It is also a great way to create more community around the conference. A great example of this is CES, which turned into the reference event for blog coverage….PodTech hosted the Blog Haus for bloggers to gather, collaborate, and make merry. The result was a lot of coverage (along with a lot of hype) about the technologies. I saw a lot questions by smart people about the relevancy of odd technologies that seemed to have no place along with a lot of questions about technologies that seemed to hit the target (but after some thought did not). This kind of feedback, interaction, and involvement with the technology community at large inspires a general acceptance of the technologies, granted CES is drastically different then a Tech-ed, Storage World, or EMC World conference……

There were also a lot of internal Microsoft bloggers talking about techready 4. I was only there for a bit and was amazed at the number of people in relation to the number of people blogging about the technologies there were learning about. Personally I saw some cool posts that convinced me to put an order in for a Windows Mobile device!! (yes a T-Mobile Dash so I will be in the first group to get Windows Mobile 6)….No, I am not lying, I was about to purchase a pearl but didn’t want my wallet to feel empty so I waited long enough for my 7100t to die every two days (I think the clock was programmed to do this, every second day at 9am Pacific)…then I read all the cool features of mobile 6, checked if the corporate messaging team supported windows mobile, and ordered one….

Another reason….The RSA conference was happening at the same time as techready and also got a huge amount of coverage. Even EMC’s masked blogger Storagezilla jumped in feet first and got Mark Lewis on a podcast interview….btw SZ, your’s was way better then MarketWatch!

So what about Exchange Connections, the Exchange conference coming up in April…..of course I’ll be there….Finally there will be an unconference session at one of these Microsoft related events!!! (see the pbwiki on the right of this blog, enter your topic ideas). But who is going to blog about it? (I personally will) but I don’t see any conference sponsored blogging on the site and the last one got very little blog coverage (I would argue that it’s because of the lack of blog sponsorship by the event planners)….They are going to allow one unconference style session, which is a start……a better start then the storage industry conferences….

Speaking of those, who’s going to blog about EMC World? It’s supposed to be huge this year now that the Momentum conference, the Software Developers conference, and the EMC Technology Summit is combined, there are a lot of things to talk about. Will EMC make use of the talents from RSA and the new Corporate blog talents to support keynote webcasts, blogger press passes, and speaker podcasts? Perhaps Joe and Steve will talk about how Steve’s main conference puts out almost as much content as CES through blogs, podcasts, vlogging, and the like…I think they are in a great spot for it this year (especially if they take note of CES, VMWorld, & the RSA conference)….and of course if they have some interest from Time’s person of the year to hear/watch/read/create content about the conference….

What do you think? iSCSI debate re-visisted? Blog coverage of Mark Lewis’s keynote? I’d blog it…would you blog/read it?