Why I never listen to speeches at tech conferences
I’ve been to some of most celebrated tech events around the world over last five years or so. As attendee, pitching startup, keynote speaker or moderator. As organizer of Pirate Summit Global I’m myself running ~40 events a year across Europe, Middle East and Asia.
One thing however I rarely do at conferences, is listening to speeches.
I even developed a formula for that. The number of speeches I’ve listened during the event equals one point in my reverse quality scale.
You may be thinking — what an uneducated and ignorant person should I be? There's so much work behind conferences to bring some of greatest minds in tech sharing their world changing ideas. And, hey, so many attendees who, unlike me, have paid huge money for the luxury to listen to those people and ideas.
Well.. Startup events, conferences and festivals are designed for one simple reason. Serendipity. Connecting with amazing people to do amazing things together in future. Not listening to what others has done in past. My scoring is simple. If the only thing I can do at the conference is listen to people speaking, it’s a bad conference — as simple as that — I haven’t achieved my goal. Event simply haven’t met my expectations. I’ve wasted my time.
And as an organizer, if I cannot bring value to attendees in a form of quality networking, regardless of how amazing speakers and ideas are there on stage, it's a failed conference.
P.S. besides, most conferences are recorded. Some are not, but hey, there’s more world changing ideas available, for free, than you will have patience to watch anyway. That’s what we have Youtube for, or TED.com or iTunes. Just check out some of most remarkable ones for start.
DLD
https://www.youtube.com/user/DLDconference
World Economic Forum
https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldEconomicForum
SXSW
https://www.youtube.com/user/sxsw
TNW
https://www.youtube.com/user/thenextweb/
Web Summit
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJtkHqH4Qof97TSx7BzE5IQ/videos
Oreilly
https://www.youtube.com/user/OreillyMedia
Le Web
https://www.youtube.com/user/leweb
And when you run out of videos to watch, there's always TED
http://www.ted.com/
Why do you attend events? Share your thoughts in comments.
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