Marketing Nirvana

Summary: Gnomedex 2007 — A balanced view — Room for improvement? — How do we get great speakers? — My take — Feel free to share your $0.02

Robert Steele’s keynote at Gnomedex 2007

By now, many of you may have read my earlier “Top 10 reasons I dug Gnomedex” post, where I outlined what a revelation the event was for me as a first time attendee. Having said that I also pointed out that a few presentations that didn’t hit the mark. So, a couple of posts; one from Dave Winer and one from Chris himself, seem to have reignited the Gnomedex conversation. Here’s why?

1. Controversial speakers:

Politics and religion are always difficult to fathom and this year there was Robert Steele who stirred some really controversial stuff on politics. Definitely, something that may have alienated a few audience members. I remember, Chris, trying to diffuse the tone while he transitioned to another speaker, but it was a pretty powerful keynote. Dave Winer, for one, is not impressed:

The opening keynote speaker, Robert Steele, was a total disaster, completely inappropriate, insulting to our intelligence, and way off-topic. He rushed through his complex slides, strung together countless buzzphrases into non-sentences, never completed a thought, and made it clear he wasn’t even taking questions, much less disagreement.

2. Were the speakers providing value?

This is a subjective question. I for one, loved the presentations from Guy Kawasaki, Greg Spiridellis (y’know – the JibJab guy), Darren Barefoot (highly underrated), Ignite sessions (w/ my friends Deb and Dave presenting), Calacanis (whose larger topic on Internet spam needs to be pursued), Derek K. Miller (MVP, shining a spotlight on dealing w/ cancer), Vanessa Fox, and I could go on.

Of course, the topic on everybody’s mind is: the quality of speakers? Apart from those mentioned above, a few others were either lacking in preparation, ambiguous and a some were actually intimidated by the audience.

3. Future selection of speakers/topics:

I then had a disjointed twitter chat w/ Chris, Shannon, Scoble (& Chris Heuer joined late) over twitter on constructive improvements regarding selecting the right speakers. I think Shannon had some great suggestions. He has a blog post on that here.

So, as an event organizer how do you select the right speakers? I was at the Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year and trust me, there were definitely some panel discussions that I didn’t find value from and that’s subjective too. So, here are my four ideas, I’m just throwing out there for Gnomedex (I’ve shared them w/ Chris already). Feel free to continue the conversation here with your constructive suggestions.

My $0.02 (actually it’s more like $0.05)

1. If the community or user is at the center of the conference, would it make sense to vote panels and speakers through a voting mechanism (a la panel selection at SXSW?).
2. Maybe less politics (it’s always controversial. Just my $0.02)
3. Maybe more experienced speakers, less first-timers?
4. Maybe a third day of Barcamp like sessions? (suggested by Shannon, too, if I recall right?)
5. Using one’s professional network to get the right speakers. This is a suggestion I gave Aaron Kahlow at the Online Marketers Summit while presenting on best ways marketers can leverage social networks. (Disclosure: I work at LinkedIn and we were one of the co-sponsors; but I write as a friend and member of the blogging community who thoroughly enjoyed his first Gnomedex event)

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Related content from:

1. Tris Hussey
2. Shannon Clark
3. Dave Winer
4. Chris Pirillo
5. Scoble’s Tweets
6. Vanessa Fox
7. Ethan Kaplan