TEDGLOBAL vs. well, everything else

I’m here attending TEDGLOBAL being held in Oxford, England. It’s a great place, great venue with good speakers. Unfortunately, it is not on par with Reboot7 or Gnomedex 5.0. This is both surprising yet somehow expected.  This post is as much about the conferences as it is about where communications are going and the impact it will have on you from the perspectives of being a speaker, sponsor and just a plain old attendee.

TEDGLOBAL is part of the TED Conferences run by Chris Anderson, a local Oxford lad, as it turns out. All of the normal stuff, location, speaker line up, venue, etc, are well done. In fact he has wide open, easy WiFi that isn’t crashing all over the venue and my Oxford dorm room has 100Mbps coming into my laptop. Well done.

Here is the problem which effectively, in my opinion, will net TEDGlobal out as, so so. Consider this situation.

Professor Dan Gilbert of Harvard has done some excellent research into happiness and people’s mistaken predictions of their own emotional states. He gave a talk about this and how this research is rewriting economics.  A chunk of the presentation was about people buying lotto tickets, why they do it, odds, etc. The whole talk was outstanding, dynamic, lots to think about, the crowd appeared to love it. Lights go up and after Chris does the polite/proper well done, opens it up for questions. Question one is an excellent one on fear, the terror incidents and Professor Gilbert gave an excellent answer. 

Then a guy stands up, says “I’m Jay Walker” Jay Walker, by the way, is the founder of Priceline.com and is currently running his own Think Tank of sorts, Walker Digital Media. 

He proceeds to basically call BS on the lottery example, making some particularly solid comments about economists. The crowd loved it and darn near gave Walker a standing ovation. Professor Gilbert was particularly good at his response which people liked as well but you could see in Jay’s face and body language, there was way way more he wanted to say and wanted to debate.  Here you had a very very bright, well respected, honor ladened professor tagged against a very very successful enterprenuer calling a bunch of the ‘book knowledge’ el stinko.

And what happened next? Nothing. Chris cut it off and moved on.

This action effectively killed, in my mind, exactly what TED stood for in the first place, conversation, lots of conversation, a mix of new ideas, practical, and new ways to think.

In TEDGLOBAL’s how to get the most out of the conference, there are 8 points.

Point number two is See every session with these words “The best TED moments seem to happen when you least expect it.” and “TED is not about what you already know. It is about how what you know connects to everything else.”

There was a perfect moment, gone. Chris should have jumped up, said “TED MOMENT, lunch is gonna be late!” Then he should have had Jay Walker up on the stage with the two of them diving in. 

How do I know this would have been an amazing thing? Simple. After Chris spiked the conversation, we break for lunch. I happened to sit right next to Professor Gilbert and after all the food is pretty much done, Jay Walker comes over and engages the Professor. In fact, he plops down on the floor and the two of them begin a brilliant dialog. 

Perfect and Amazing. For me and two other people who were sitting and paying attention. I didn’t say a word, rather absorbed it and looked for lessons that I can use in my own world. Three people “got it” and 300+ plus missed a dialog that  was amazing.  All because of a schedule. All because this “event” is more about, well, the event.

Contrast that with Reboot7 and, as a random example, Jason Calacanis, who is trying to give all of mainstream media a run for it’s money.  Jason can be found doing his thing at Weblogs Inc. Jason gave a talk and used the phrase “Really Simple Stealing” as his rant on people bringing in content, republishing as their own, etc. The debate that resulted with all the bloggers in the room was excellent and nobody “broke for lunch.” It ran over and even continued in the hallway with 50 people or more talking about it and at least 50 more blogging about his talk and the ideas he presented. Lots of conversation, lots of follow up, and lots of people who weren’t there getting a good chunk of what was going on. 

Doc Searls, at the same conference, took questions until there were no more questions. The conference went overtime. Nobody cared.

Before the REBOOT7 Conference there were hundreds of blog entries, wikis, etc. People were blogging the speakers, live, as they talked. Robert Scoble had an IRC thing going on, live, as he did the talk. 

And two incredibly bright people, Professor Gilbert and Jay Walker, have engaged in a dialog that is gone.  Doc Searls, Scoble, Jason, and others had amazing dialogs both on and off stage with lots of people who told lots of others. 

Here at TEDGLOBAL, lots of these opportunities are lost and that’s a shame.  Great speakers, great venue, so this isn’t a dump on Chris.

What this means for you.

Reboot7 and Gnomedex 5.0 probably have more impact in today’s changing world and while that’s good for Chris Pirillo, it’s a shame that the people that go to Gnomedex and Reboot don’t get to hear Steven Levvitt (freakonomics) or Iqbal Quadir’s work in Bangladesh.  And not just the talks, those are on a set of DVDs, no, the real value is the Q&A and the conversations that take place. Then you, as an observer, watch smart people debate, put your thoughts into the mix and blog the whole thing.

Sadly, I fear, this conference is “yesterday” trying to be tomorrow with great content in the old school’s format.  Too bad.

So, as you hunt conferences to attend, find out how the important stuff is dealt with. Do speakers run overtime? Lots of Q&A? Do the speakers stick around? Before? After? All the normal questions that have a new set of meanings.

As a sponsor? My gut tells me, coughing up $10,000 to hand out a goodie at Gnomedex is going to be way more valuable then sponsoring the tea break at TEDGLOBAL and that’s regardless of your size.

As a speaker? Refuse to do talks where you don’t have 50% of your time being able to engage 75% of the people. Tall order, I know, but start there. You are driving the bus when it comes to content and you can make changes that matter.

I’ll post impressions on the speakers later.

Comments

[Matt]

How many interesting conversations were happening in _other_ rooms while Doc Searls ran overtime? You don't know...neither do any of the other folks who were with him while he did it.

If the Q&A for a talk runs overtime, it's because either the speaker had too small a bloc of schedule, or the speaker spent too much time yammering and not enough interacting. In my experience, it's substantially more the latter than the former, but your experience my differ.

Sure...letting the audience and the speaker interact is better than cutting off a live and interesting discussion. But _having to make that choice_ is still a sign that somebody has failed, and neither choice is without serious costs as well as serious benefits, and the _only_ reason I have a slight preference for "let them run over" is because audience members who think the next session they wanted to attend would be more interesting than staying late are free to leave and go there.

[Rick Segal]

Matt,
As always, thanks for stopping by. In the case of this conference, sessions were back to back and let them run over clearly was an option.

Thanks for the comments.

[Treogirl]

In response to Matt: Isn't the question of 'how many interesting conversations were going on in other rooms' always out there whenever you have to choose one talk out of many? If the Q&A runs overtime, how is that a failure? If people are still asking questions and the speaker is still providing thought provoking answers, I would see that as an immense success. Picture the opposite: the speech and Q&A combined run under time and people get to go to lunch early. Is that a success? Hardly, if it means that no one was interested enough in what the speaker had to say to want to add their own thoughts.

Yeah, schedules are nice, but they should be a guideline. Personally, I would rather get the opportunity to see one really interesting, thought provoking person interact well with the crowd and generate many questions in the audience, than attend a conference where my the best things I remember about it three months later were "well, it ran really on time and the food at lunch was good".

[Matt]

I think it goes without saying that timely endings are not the only or even the primary virtue. (Ghod, how ironic it is that something I say might have been interpreted in a manner contradictory to that...)

But still, the _need_ to run over strikes me as evidence of poor planning at best.