Office 2.0 Recap

I agree with Sam Lawrence, that Ofiice 2.0 fell far short of expectations:

[from Go Big Always - Will the “2.0 Conferences” survive? by Sam Lawrence}

I hate to say it but overall last week’s Office 2.0 Conference was a miss.

• Poor Ismael only gives himself 6 weeks from start to finish to plan and execute the whole thing (and he doesn’t do this gig full time). The guy is brilliant and the things he can do is amazing, it’s just a different world now.
  
  
• The short time frame makes it a stress to delegate responsibility and to market the event itself (only 300 people attended this year and most everyone was a vendor)
  
  
• The number of conferences focused in this space has increased. Focusing on value is even more important.
  
  
• It’s no longer a “new” market. The same old session topics, speakers and cast of characters have been in play for a couple of years now.
  
  
• The economy makes picking and choosing discretionary trips more challenging.

The whole do-it-in-6-weeks thing was cute the first time around, silly the second, and disastrous the third. All problems become last minuted catastrophes — like the defection of a major sponsor. Wosrt of all, it leaves next to no time to ruminate on topics, speakers, and structure: it all has to happen instantaneously.

Also the timing couldn’t have been worse, with TechCrunch50 and DEMO the following week, and Web 2.0 Expo a week later. This drew away the cool companies launching hotshit products.

I think Office 2.0 needs a drastic reformulation if it is to continue.