Every conference these days has a hashtag and attendees are (unless explicitly prohibited) tweeting, live-blogging, streaming audio and video. If you wanted to, from your desk, you could attend nearly every conference in the world, and for free as opposed to paying $50-$5000 to attend. In terms of content, you’d probably get anywhere from 80% – 99% of the content presented.
If you can attend 95% of the conference virtually and not pay, or attend 100% of the conference in person and pay, which will most people rationally choose? Which would you choose?
Right now, social media, for all its glamour and buzz, is still a relatively small space compared to the world of business as a whole. As it grows, how long will it be before conference organizers have to clamp down on usage to avoid completely devaluing their conferences?
Will social media, in other words, burn conferences to the ground? Yes – and it should.
My answer as co-founder of PodCamp and co-organizer of PodCamp Boston 4 is one we’ve been researching and looking at for years. Whether live or recorded, the t