Building a Smart Conference – Lessons from BlogWell

On January 22nd I had the pleasure of attending the BlogWell conference in Chicago hosted by the great people at gaspedal. Here are some thoughts from that experience:

Length Matters

The conference was scheduled as two general sessions and 8 breakout sessions, all packed into one afternoon. That mattered. Many of the attendees (myself included) were able to fly (and/or take the train) in to Chicago that morning and return home that evening. Literally had that not been the case I would not have chosen to attend.

If you absolutely must make the conference longer your value-bar will rise exponentially. It’s possible to make it worthwhile, but much more difficult.

Venue Matters

BlogWell was held at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business’s Gleacher Center which, despite it’s flash-based web site, is a fantastic facility with great breakout rooms, wireless internet and plenty of power and table/desktop space.

Numerous people were able to live blog/video stream/twitter the conference, and hundreds if not thousands of additional people were able to participate, as a direct result.

It also helped that the center is centrally located in Chicago and easily accessed via mass transportation and major airports with frequent flights.

Focus Matters

Blogging specifically and social media in general are wide-open topics that could easily lead to a complete lack of focus. Gaspedal did a great job of narrowing down the topic to the successful use of social media in large corporations.

Having that theme, along with complementary but not redundant presentations by speakers who fit the target, made for a compelling value proposition in advance and an interesting and informative conference that was easy to prioritize and mentally organize.

Interaction Matters

It’s all too easy, in this time when each of the presentations is live-streamed or recorded for future distribution, to forget that much of the value of any conference lies in the interactions between attendees, participants and presenters before, during and after the presentations.

This was certainly still the case at BlogWell, though. Even though the event was tightly packed into a short timeframe, gaspedal did a good job of prompting interaction through advance contact. One particularly bright move in that advance communication was a recommended Twitter Hashtag around which people could focus the conversation.

Before the conference started gaspedal had arranged a lunch that contributed to deep interactions. During the conference there were numerous breaks – though short and disciplined – that also allowed for spontaneous brief conversations. After the conference, through communication methods supported or encouraged by gaspedal, several groups arranged for one last offsite networking opportunity.

Event organizers have known for a long time that these elements can make a difference in the success of a conference. BlogWell shows that, as with most challenges, a handful of things done correctly can have a meaningful impact on the outcome.

What do you think?

Did you attend BlogWell? Was your experience meaningfully different than mine? Did I miss something that was a critical factor in the success of the conference? Have you attended another conference that did one of these things much better – or something else that was also critical?