Office 2.0: A Few Reflections

I am not a very active live blogger, and I didn't even try at Office 2.0 last week. But I do have some reflections about what worked and what didn't at the conference. All in all, I enjoyed the event, but it was not the conference sessions that made it for me, it was exclusively the chatting in the halls and the various events. Why? Panel session hell.

1. Death To All Panel Sessions -- panel sessions are widely known to be the least favorite format from the viewpoint of attendees. The format is simple for organizers, but unless serious, active moderation goes on panel sessions are flabby. Recommendation: Drop all panel sessions.
2. Use Other Formats -- Even when you'd like to include a large number of speakers, panel sessions aren't the only option. Consider these alternatives:
   1. Debates -- Take six members of what would have been a panel, and put them on opposite sides of an issue.
   2. Short Interviews -- Have the moderator act as an interviewer instead, and interview the various folks for 10 minutes each, about their company, research, book, whatever.
   3. Dueling Presentations -- Have each of the panelists give a 5 minute presentation, and then let the audience vote to decide who gets to give a longer version in the remaining time
3. Fewer Speakers -- The best parts of the conference were the sessions that has a single interview (Esther Dyson interviewed by Dan Farber) or a single speaker (Andrew McAfee). Just get a few more world-class minds, and refuse to let every sponsoring company get on the podium.
4. More Demos -- The blitz demo session was extremely interesting, but cramming 15 demos into one session witout a break was a pain. Take a note from the very successful and well-done Under The Radar conferences, and put only four demos into a 45 min session, with the companies segregated in sensible ways. One session with four document editing companies, or four spreadsheets, or the like.

The conference was well done, on a design basis. Everything was just so, because of organizer Ismael Ghalimi's attention to detail. But the program needs to be restructured to meet the level of style and sophistication of the tradeshow and marketing aspects. All in all, I look forward to the next Office 2.0 conference, although, as I said, the panel sessions need to be killed off for the sake of the attendees. When I was introducing my own panel session -- what a strange situation to be in -- and I stated that I hated the panel session format, spontaneous applause broke. At the end of day two, the conferees had surely had enough.

Another observation: I had a sense that the tone of the conversation was seriously different from that in other web 2.0 related conferences. In particular, the focus on IT adoption of office 2.0 apps led to a strange discord with the usual discussion of user adoption. Most of the messages sounded like sales pitches instead of more typical market analysis. That's an outcome of the enterprise focus of these companies, I guess, but it's offputting to people like me (and Tara Hunt).

tags: office+2.0, death+to+all+panel+sessions, esther+dyson, ismael+ghalimi, dan+farber, andrew+mcafee, office+2.0+conference

Comments

[Tara Hunt]

I totally felt like I was at the wrong conference.

I liked getting the iPod, though. ;)

[Stowe Boyd]

Tara - I hear you, sister. Although it's more like it was too salesy in the panels. Just keeping the vendors out may fix that.

[David Terrar]

Hey Tara - maybe you should thank Ismael for that iPod sometime.

Hi Stowe - I definitely agree with some of your sentiments, but not in the detail. For example, the demo jam needed a break, but I liked the 5 minute format and the quantity. I thought the Enterprise flavour was important for the conference. And you know I thought the same as you on the panels, but I wouldn't ditch them, I'd just make sure the topics didn't overlap so much, and that the moderators were properly briefed to do a good job like you, Neil and Jason did.

[Alan Morrison]

Stowe,

In general, I like your ideas for ways to enliven these kinds of events. You're using your imagination more than most event organizers I've encountered have seemed to. The thing about Office 2.0 was, there were so many people you wanted to hear more from, but they were down in the noise because of the format. Collaborative filtering and ranking could help at events the same way it does online, and your suggestions seem to point to ways of accomplishing that.

However, I've been at other events where the talks--presentations, one after the other, ad infinitum--were as laborious as what you described here with panels. "Death to PowerPoint" was the mantra after those. Event organizers really need to mix it up more.

Panel sessions aren't much different from the Debate format you propose. The only difference is that in the Debate format, people are forced to take a point of view they don't necessarily agree with. How would you moderate a Debate successfully? Wouldn't vendors still try to insert mentions their companies and products in their answers?

In the end, doesn't an awful lot depend on who you pick to participate and how you moderate it? Isn't it more about who you pick than it is the format? I blogged about this myself in more detail on Oct. 12.