The Wall Street Journal Weighs in on Our Blog

Well, not exactly. But L. Gordon Crovitz did write an article (Social Networking in the Digital Age) the very next day after we wrote The Conference of the Future (over on our other blog). Mr. Crovitz wrote:

“The number of us attending business conferences continues to rise, even though information can be shared at low cost in real time digitally, and despite the costs and hassles of travel.”

He says he got his statistics from American Business Media, but it looked like one of those pay to play sites, so you’ll have to trust him (but hey, he’s a Wall Street Journal columnist, after all).

In our blog article, we asked:

Do we look to technology to replace our meetings and gatherings?

Or, do we look to technology to make in-person meetings so crucial, special, entertaining and worthwhile that they will never be a threatened species?

It’s All in How You View the Event

Last Friday we sat down with someone who is definitely trying to keep those real live meetings at the top of their form. Rob Johnson of Eventvue.com talked to us about his company’s community building tools for conferences and conventions.

You have to notice that we met with him in person. We’re not bragging - it’s just that he kept insisting that a phone interview wasn’t as good as a real interview. Walks his talk.

And, he didn’t have much time. He and his partner, Josh Fraser, had just won won the Rookie of The Year Award from the Colorado Software and Internet Association the night before.

And, he had the Rocky Mountain News in line for a flattering article that ran yesterday, called “Looking for the Next Tech Star.”

What does Eventvue do for conference attendees? Well, it automatically gives them a networking profile for that particular conference - without having to fill out all those online forms. If you’ve ever registered for LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace, you’ll know how huge that is.

How does Eventvue do that?! They piggy-back on the information you already provide when you register for a conference - simple as that.

Then, they have some sort of collection of magic, voodoo and hocus pocus (not Rob’s explanation, mind you) to scour the Internet for your LinkedIn profile, your blog, your web site and your Nordstrom’s credit card information (well, maybe not that last one).

Then, you tweak your profile, put in some keywords and tags, a short bio - and all of that is accessible ONLY to other conference attendees. Now, you’re ready to meet up.

Imagine being able to connect to other attendees, speakers and exhibitors BEFORE the whole thing starts! Imagine getting to know a few people before you even step up to get your name badge.

We’ve attended meetings and conferences for years now, and our biggest challenge is to connect with other people - instead of being focused on breakout maps, hidden rest rooms and whether we’ll get there before the break desserts run out.

To Meet One Another

It’s about people, not bits and bytes. You’ve got to stand up and cheer for technology experts like Rob Johnson who get that.

We’re continually bombarded with the idea (as we have written before in The Speaking Industry is Not Dead),

“that a tele-seminar is as effective as a gathering, that sitting in front of a screen is as good as mingling with others, that podcasts can touch people’s hearts the way a speaker can touch a congregation.”

They aren’t, it isn’t and they can’t. Or, as Mr. Crovitz wrote in his Wall Street Journal article:

Perhaps the more digital we become, the greater our desire to spend at least part of our time in the very analog activity of meeting with one another. Human beings may not after all have evolved that far from those first caveman gatherings around the fire – the original social networking sites.

“…to meet one another.” We’ll keep doing that no matter how many webinar software gizmos are invented and no matter how strong the pitch is for online learning (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

And, we’ll keep giving Rob Johnson and others like him the tip of our hats - for making stuff that helps to grow human interactions, instead of trying to replace them.