On conferences, research and repeats

There are a slew of social media-related events flagged for the fall from the like of Melcrum, and I was discussing the merits of attending with a colleague. He thought it was not worth attending unless you were a speaker or knew the speakers track record.

Generally, I am not big on attending conferences, maybe because I have been to so many as part of a client assignment. On any topic, including (especially?) there are other ways to stay updated, such as to read the research. Plenty of big-name choices this year: the Economist Intelligence Unit, McKinsey, KPMG and, er, KPMG again (decent summary on both recently from Paul Anderson at Tech Lunch) to name a few.

The thing about many of these social media reports is that they are static and prone to being out of date by the time the research is completed and the findings published. The EIU research, published at the start of 2007, doesn't mention micro-blogging in text or video format at all, for instance, KPMG's insight into a possible interweb bubble would make good fodder for Daring Fireball's translation of PR-speak, and McKinsey talks of Web2.0 in businesses, not Enterprise2.0.

Compared with the research, conferences should at least be up-to-date as the speakers will not easily get away with simply regurgitating the same social media presentation as they did six months ago. We have some very good video for that. I think I'll see if I can get to another event in the near future.