I spent the past few days in Toronto, attending the Mesh conference for the first time. Yesterday I moderated a panel entitled, rather cheerily, “Using the Web for Good”. I had the pleasure of cross-examining Gavin, Duarte and Sarah (here are a couplephotos). Marc live-blogged, and Jeremy, uh, live-tweeted the discussion.
The conference was exceptionally well-run, both totally professional and very personable. The highlight for me was an informal keynote (live-bloggage) by Jessica Jackley, the co-founder of Kiva. She’s a good speaker, but her wisest choice was not to over-sell the story of Kiva. She doesn’t have to, because it sells itself so well. It was also a little brave to start off by quoting Jesus. During her talk, an ad hoc Mesh ‘team’ (an associated group of lenders) was formed on Kiva, and raised $250.
I was curious to check out Mesh in the context of comparing it to Northern Voice. In terms of structure and size, they’re actually quite similar. They’re even held in similar spaces. The MaRS building is a little institutional, and has a large, vaulted atrium, much like UBC’s Forest Sciences Centre. Mesh is simply business-oriented, while Northern Voice is not. There were a lot more business suits at Mesh than fleece jackets.
I had lunch in Kensington Market, and was immediately reminded of a TV show that I never watched when I was a kid, but, for some reason, I can clearly recall the opening credits:
UPDATE: A bunch of videos from Mesh 2009, including Jessica’s keynote, are available here. Click the Browse videos button at the bottom of the first embedded video to navigate through sundry videos to find what interests.
This year’s Northern Voice conference–the fifth one–pretty much sold out in three days. Tickets for Friday’s unconference lasted longer than Saturday, but certainly not much longer. And the wait list for each day is, by my guess, nearing fifty people. That happened with no marketing at all, besides blog posts and tweets from the organizers.
I have mixed feelings about that result. It’s terrific that the conference is so popular–it’s an affirmation that people really dig the event. But by virtue of that popularity (and despite its $60 price tag), the event has become kind of exclusive. If you’re not on Twitter or jacked in to the local blogosphere, you probably missed the boat on registering.
In years past, we’ve tried, when possible, to encourage noobies to attend the event. Last year (and I gather something similar is happening this year) there was a kind of Social Media 101 series on the Friday specifically for those who are new to this world. However, when the conference sells out so quickly, a bunch of those folks (and a bunch of connected, bloggy people too) can’t come. And that kind of sucks.
What To Do?
I’ve said for the past couple of years that we could double the capacity–from about 350 to 700–and still sell out. That’s never appealed, though, because an event that size would be pretty unwieldy. There would have to be huge or many rooms, more sponsors and considerably more infrastructure.
Organizer James and I were chatting last night, and discussed the possibility of making the event biannual. It happens during the spring reading break out at UBC, and could also easily happen during the fall one. If we did that, the association (Northern Voice went non-profit last year) would probably have to hire an event manager, because the volunteer organizers are all busy people stretched too thin as it is.
But I’m not sure that would actually solve the problem. I think most of the attendees who came to ‘Northern Voice Spring’ would also register for a ‘Northern Voice Fall’.
Or maybe not. Maybe doubling the number of conferences would, say, bring 250 people to each and normalize, at least in the short to medium term, the supply-demand imbalance.
It’s a nice problem to have, but one that becomes more pressing each year. Then again, maybe this social media stuff will die off in the next year or two, and Northern Voice 2012 will only have 59 attendees.
What do you think? Should we worry about too much demand and not enough supply of the moose?
UPDATE: Frequent Northern Voice attendee Mack posted his thoughts on the same topic.
We only have two sponsor slots left. If you’ve got $500 burning a hole in your company’s pocket, please consider sponsoring BarCamp.
If I can get enough bodies, I’m going to run a hockey pool this season. The draft will be at The Backstage Lounge on Granville Island immediately following BarCamp, starting at 5:30pm sharp. For more details and to sign up, visit this page on the BarCamp wiki. I know there’s a reasonably small convergence of geeks and sports fans, but hopefully we can scare up 10 or 15. Non BarCampers welcome, of course.
I’m organizing a little field trip this Wednesday night for a media preview of a Vancouver store opening. It’s the sort of store that would appeal to the geekily-inclined, and it’s got a couple of exciting wrinkles. I’ve invited some local bloggers, but we’ve got spots free for a couple more.
If that sounds appealing, send me an email and I can provide all the details.
I apologize for being obtuse, but I’d prefer not to disclose the details publicly, lest I scoop all of the journalists and bloggers in attendance.
UPDATE: I think I need to cut things off there. Thanks for your interest.
I spent the past few days in Toronto, attending the Mesh conference for the first time. Yesterday I moderated a panel entitled, rather cheerily, “Using the Web for Good”. I had the pleasure of cross-examining Gavin, Duarte and Sarah (here are a couple photos). Marc live-blogged, and Jeremy, uh, live-tweeted the discussion.