The Conference Is Dead (...Does Anyone Care?)

I've spent a lot of time at conferences, from high end boutique brain candystore programs like Pop!Tech to student-led events around the world. At this point I'm ready to say that the conference model we have today - keynotes, plenary sessions, networking breaks, etc - is dead. And good riddance.

First, what I don't mean. Gatherings of people are going to do nothing but increase in importance. As more and more of our lives go online and particularly as our professional worlds cross more and more boundaries and connect us to people farther and farther away. In that world, the oasis of real human connection that gatherings provide will have an increasingly high emotional, psychological, and consequently professional value.

But the model of conferences - just like the model of everything else, it seems - is stuck in a 20th century. It's hierarchical, it's dominated by a class system that divides along lines of prestige, previous attendance, and a host of other factors, and more than anything else, it does stuff not because it's what people want but just because it's sort of how it's always been done.

I've been thinking for a while that the old style format is headed out, but two interesting things happened in the past couple weeks that have made me even more ready to dance on its grave.

First, the Opportunity Collaboration became one of (if not the) first high profile event to employ a far more "unconference-y" model and charge an expensive (as in, $5,000+) registration fee. No keynotes, no plenaries. People paid for the ability to stay in a setting where they could more easily find and connect with one another. The content was anchored by a group discussion and attendee created workshops. Everyone (and this means C-level executives at some of the world's best known nonprofits) was dressed in flip-flops and shorts, and the name tags didn't even have organizations and titles on them. And in case you couldn't tell from my posts, it kicked ass.

Second, I'm now at Pop!Tech, and one of the things that's immediately clear is that this is not a conference. This is theater. It's high-end, "Masterpiece Theatre" for the brain theater, but theater nonetheless. The entire format of the event is to parade brilliance in front of the audience and let them take in and observe things as they will. They have some structures for networking and community building, but mostly this is the performance that anchors and inspires the community: the action is manifest throughout the year in the form of labs, fellowship programs, and other things that actually get attendees working together. But that's not the job of this set of performances.

I've been thinking a lot, actually, about Clay Shirky's TED@State talk from the summer. In it he talks about how media is no longer just a broadcast to be consumed but a site of organizing. His point is that as people consume media, they then organize groups around that to take the ideas, inspiration, or dissent generated by that media and turn it into action.

Performances as we are used to them - concerts, theater, dance, etc - have always been delivered in a broadcast model. People interested in whatever the content is sit around and consume that performance, then go home to the rest of their world.

The weird thing about the model is that the filter of which performances you would chose actively to seek out may actually be a lens through which to find other people you would like talking to, or perhaps even working with it. With that in mind, thinking of Pop!Tech (or TED, I would imagine, although I haven't been there yet) as a 21st century mental performance, with the speakers providing the content and the attendees creating the "organizing site" around it, makes a lot of sense.

But the point is, that's not a conference. Or at least, not what we think of a conference right now. So the situation we have is one where you've got groups like the Opportunity Collaboration demonstrating that what people pay for at events is social capital - access to incredible networks, and at the same time events like Pop!Tech reinterpreting performance and using that performance as a platform for ongoing action.

In that situation, why do so many events cling to the older model? I've gotten nothing but positive response from my post a couple days ago about the extinction of plenaries, and in fact have never heard any one (with the exception of the occasional conference organizer themselves) really defend the structure. So what gives?

I think in part it's economics. The assumption is that people participate in conferences largely because of the quality of the speakers they bring in. Being able to put together interesting and provocative panel discussion quadruples the number of speakers an event can have at any one time, and so shouldn't that bring in more registrations? That's a tough argument for me to accept though; the economics of conferences tend to stink anyway, so why not experiment with different formats? What's more, the high price-tage of "all social capital" events like Opportunity Collaboration or "all keynote" performances like Pop!Tech and TED would seem to undermine it.

I think the inevitable thrust is that more and more, what we now call an "unconference" will increasingly just be what we think of as a conference. Sure there will be experiments with different formats that involve various levels of participation, but at the end of the day, I think that models that aren't rooted in the obliteration of conference hierarchy and the recognition that people go to events to find other people are living on borrowed time.

(Photo: Banana Donuts)