WARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There aren't a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, you'll feel much more knowledgeable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event.
Over the past 6 years, I've attended nearly 100 conferences on search, online marketing, startups and technology. I've given presentations or sat on panels at nearly all of them. I've organized our own SEOmoz seminars here in Seattle and in London, built panels for a variety of other conference series and sat in the audience for many hundreds of sessions. Oddly, in the past 3 months, I've had more discussions about the conference format and the optimization of the experience than I can ever recall in previous years.
I don't know whether it's me thinking about the problem more or just stumbling into conversations that center around conference strategy and business models, but like Twitter and conversion rate optimization, it's been finding its way into the nooks and crannies of every lunch, dinner, casual coffee or post-session beer.
Wow... Even Google Trends says this is a hot topic.
I consider the organizers of conferences like SMX, SES, Pubcon & many overseas events (RIMC, SMX Sydney, the SMX/SES shows in the UK & Europe, etc.) to be both good friends and good people. This blog post is in no way meant to denigrate or cast aspersions at their intents or achievements (which have been remarkable - SEO itself has gained tremendous legitimacy because of their efforts). Quite the opposite - it's meant to highlight some of the reasons why things we, as conference goers and speakers, complain about continue and why it's hard to change the status quo. I'm also going to try putting forward some ideas at the end of the post that I have seen work well and would love to see more of (or more experimentation with) in the future.
(Added late) It's important to note while reading this post that I'm sharing my perspective, opinions and experiences, so please read with SEOmoz's usual "this is an opinion piece" lens.
Competing Incentives
On one side, we have conference & event organizers. They have businesses to maintain, revenue and profits to grow and pressures from owners/investors/boards to meet certain goals. They have to please advertisers, sponsors & exhibitors, but can't do any of that without first delighting customers (those who buy tickets to the events).
On the other, we have attendees (and, to a lesser extent, speakers) who want to learn, have an enjoyable experience and get personal and professional value from the event(s). Most attendees are not paying themselves - this is a business expense they need to justify and hence, managers and C-level types hold the pursestrings.
In the subsections below, I'll try to walk through the competing incentives and goals of these two parties and why they make the conference experience so tough to perfect.
Venues, Locations & Timing
This is one of the easiest dichotomies to describe. In one corner, we have the organizers, who are optimizing on cost. In the other, we've got attendees, who want the best experience (particularly if they're traveling). Not surprisingly, every organizer wants to hold their event at the best possible time in the most optimal location. That means, at least here in the US, winter events in warm weather climates like southern California, Las Vegas, Florida and Hawaii, summer events in mild climates like the Pacific Northwest or the Bay Area and events in extreme climates like the Northeast and Midwest in Fall/Spring.
Economics dictates that supply for these optimal locations at optimal times will be low because demand is high. This also means that prices will rise accordingly. Organizers know it's hard to pass those costs on to attendees. Once a conference's price has been set for a few years, fluctuating dramatically is challenging.
What many may not realize is some of the additional, behind-the-scenes inputs. For example, conference venues like to book 12-18 months in advance (sometimes more for very large/expensive/high demand events/locations). They require down payments and guarantees, since re-booking a space if an event cancels 3 or even 6 months ahead often proves impossible. In addition, advertisers, speakers, exhibitors and conference goers themselves get accustomed to certain events at certain times in specific places. Changing an established event always carries risk.
Next time you wonder why SES has a show in Chicago in December and New York in March or why RIMC hits Reykjavik in winter, remember that costs, momentum and contracts make those very hard things to change. If we were all willing to fly to Anchorage in January, you can bet the costs would be rock bottom.
Attendance Level
This one isn't quite as clear cut. For some attendees, an intimate, small show experience is ideal. You get one-on-one time with the speakers, more opportunity for Q+A, a less stressful environment and, typically, easier times with everything from getting good food to booking hotels to scheduling meetings with other conference-goers/speakers. However...
The incentives are frequently the reverse for both speakers (who want large crowds so they can justify the travel expense and preparation time) and for organizers (who have a tough time charging enough to a small group to make up for what a larger base could bring). Organizers also want to signal that their event is "a big deal" and high attendance numbers is one of the best ways to do this.
So why not go for huge venues and trim the costs down to minimal levels I hear you ask? Good question.
The obvious answer is profit margins (and sometimes, just covering costs), but it's not the whole reason. Advertisers, sponsors, exhibitors and even speakers want to be in front of "qualified" audiences. An audience of web marketers paying $100 to go to a show is hard to pitch as a compelling and potentially lucrative base to these groups. However, if tickets are $1,800 and 5,000 people show up, every speaker and sponsor in the world wants to make their voice heard and presence known to that group. Even the big industry players like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. will be willing to lose their top notch talent for a week to get in front of the audience, mingle with the crowd and network with the best and brightest.
Some attendees are also more excited by large events. They provide greater opportunities to meet a high quantity of peers and help lend credibility to the value and importance of the event. They also tend to draw big name speakers and presenters, which means a perception of greater value from the learning aspects of the conference.
Of course, this is all balanced by the availability and affordability of venues. SMX Advanced happens in Seattle and for each of the past 2 years, it's been completely sold out. The organizers could go to a larger facility, but Seattle doesn't have many that support in excess of 2,000 people without dramatically raising the costs (and likely lowering quality) and the SMX organizers may like the feel/vibe of the current audience size. It can also be a positive signal to consistently sell out a show - every SEOmoz seminar we've thrown has sold out weeks before the event and this means more early bookings, greater consistency in attendance and revenue and an easier time planning (to be fair, SEOmoz's seminars are a small fraction of the size - 150-250 attendees - of true, large conferences like Pubcon, SES, SMX or even OMS - and hence aren't particularly comparable).
Speakers
Things get more contentious and thorny around the issue of speakers. Attendees and organizers alike can agree that in a perfect world, only speakers who consistently earn top ratings and attract large followings would present. Sadly, in virtually every industry, these individuals comprise only a handful of players. Google's Matt Cutts and Avinash Kaushik are likely among them as is Danny Sullivan of Third Door and Seth Godin. However, I'm hard pressed to name many more that would attract paying audiences simply with their presence.
There's also a large group of phenomenal speakers like Greg Boser, Dave Naylor, Vanessa Fox, Jessica Bowman, Marshall Simmonds and the like who are excellent presenters, incredibly valuable to the audience, and, together with other positive signals, are likely to draw in paying attendees. This is where the trouble starts, though. These individuals didn't necessarily start out as remarkable presenters. In fact, I've personally seen speakers I'd consider "rock stars" today many years back and the same couldn't always be said of them. It takes a trial-and-error, weeding-out process to determine who's going to be great, and that means you need to try out new names and faces as an organizer.
Finally, you've got groups of new or nearly-new speakers, some of whom may be diamonds in the rough and others who may be complete duds. Organizers have little information to base this on other than their CV, a pitch form and possibly recommendations from previous events. Tragically, even great online writers/bloggers/personalities sometimes turn out to be less-than-amazing when placed in front of hot lights, a restless audience and 15 minutes of Powerpoint.
Organizers & panel leaders (those who organize individual sessions or tracks) complain to me all the time about the necessity of finding the new stars, getting those diamonds-in-the-rough enough experience to shine and providing a diversity of speakers. Many technology conferences face the constant problem of gender imbalance and I'm certainly not immune to it. Last year, between Seattle and London events SEOmoz & Distilled had less than 15% women give talks - a shameful number.
Everyone can agree that we need more truly great speakers and fewer mediocre/poor ones. But when you're trying to discover new talent, mature up-and-coming stars AND bring as many speakers into the event as possible (see the next section), it clashes with the goals of consistently excellent quality speakers and presentations.
Session Formats
This might be the toughest problem of all. More speakers = more attendees. And yes, that often holds true for even new speakers and those of low-middling quality. The reason is that speakers frequently invite clients, partners and colleagues as well as promote the event on their sites, blogs and social media accounts. If you want your event to have thousands of attendees, get 100+ speakers and they'll (hopefully) help spread the word for you.
The problem is the session formats this creates. In order to maximize numbers of speakers while fixing the event length, you move from solo presentations to panels with increasingly larger number of participants.
Some organizers argue that panels are a good thing and I'd agree in moderation. For something like an "Ask the Search Engines" panel, having a representative from both Bing & Google makes sense. For Q+A sessions in general, 3-4 panelists can help to spark discussion and even get into vigorous and valuable debates (at SMX West last week, my friend Roger Monti and I got into a nice tiff that I think helped keep the audience on its toes - and yes, it was all in good fun and good humor).
However, when it comes to learning about an individual topic in a robust, in-depth fashion, I think it's very tough to argue that having a highly talented panel of 4 or 5 speakers give 10-14 minute slide decks can compare to a single 45-50 minute session with a single great speaker who can go both broad and deep (and then take questions). The highest rated panels (from my understanding and from direct experience with the ones I've seen) are always those where a remarkable presenter has the full time to dig into their subject matter. Three weeks ago I was at OMS San Diego where Dharmesh Shah spoke on Twitter and Tim Ash presented on Conversion Rate Optimization. The difference between that and a panel approach is night and day - there's just no comparison.
But, as an organizer, if you optimize towards these highly rated sessions and kill the panels, you lose speakers which costs you reach and buzz and, likely, attendees. Happy attendees might rave about the value of the session in their reviews, but no one has the incentive to fill the seats like a speaker (even a bad one). Solving this issue might be a pipe dream.
Session Topics
What about the topic choices themselves? I hear attendees constantly complain about certain topics going missing while others get too much coverage. Organizers, meanwhile, struggle with how to fit in esoteric, but likely fascinating topics against tried-and-true (and in-demand) popular sessions.
The best thing an organizer can do is to survey their audience ahead of time and plan/prepare from that feedback. But, this is much easier said than done. Organizers don't necessarily know who's going to be at a show with enough lead time to arrange speaker schedules and build a topic plan. It's also very hard to get commitments from a large number of speakers with a shorter deadline and nearly impossible to nail down keynotes and big names without months of advance notice.
When Will Critchlow and I do the planning for the SEOmoz/Distilled seminars, we get to cheat in a lot of ways. First off, we have the email addresses of all the PRO and registered (free) members on SEOmoz, so we can survey to our heart's content ahead of time (and do). Second, we actually optimize to speakers - since we largely don't use the panel approach, we pool together a list of the speakers we've seen in the last 12 months that have wowed us and then ask them to give performances that speak to their strengths and experiences. Since we only need 10-15 speakers per event, we can personally invite a handful of top-notch folks each time. We know we're only covering a fractional amount of material (more cheating), but can get away with it since this is a niche event that doesn't need to appeal to a broad audience.
Can a larger conference use these tactics? Almost certainly not. Their audiences aren't nearly as nicely packaged ahead of time, and panels are critical to growing the number of speakers, providing the diversity, giving experience to the "diamonds-in-the-rough," addressing all the important topics of the day, etc. Conferences like Pubcon, SMX, SES and OMS would also almost certainly take a huge amount of heat if they stopped accepting pitches and simply relied on a smaller contingent of consistently excellent speakers. Advertisers, exhibitors and sponsorships would likely drop too (even though they're technically not at all tied to the editorial programming side of the equation), and these are a massive source of revenue.
Amenities
As an attendee, we probably think that things like reliable wifi, better food and comfortable seating with tables and power outlets in session rooms makes a big difference. The problem is, these don't tend to correlate with how we actually choose conferences to attend and/or return to. I know organizers who've invested hugely in the attendee experience, only to see retention rates drop (despite the fewer numbers of tweeted/blogged complaints). When those dollars are re-invested in marketing the conference, drawing in bigger keynotes, or optimizing other aspects, the numbers get better (even when cardboard sandwiches and grade-school chairs are employed).
We, as conference goers, vote with our wallets, and we apparently don't care as much about the amenities as we make out to (personal note - please, conference organizers, don't use this knowledge against us too much; I love comfy chairs, good food and great wifi).
Press Passes & Guest Passes
Speaking of thorny issues - little in the conference world raises as much public ire as this one. For nearly every event it makes good sense to give bloggers and journalists press passes. However, when a big, expensive, popular event is thrown, these can quickly gobble into profit margins with questionable returns.
The problems are myriad - bloggers don't often deliver the extent or quality of coverage they promise and traditional journalists frequently make no promise of coverage at all (and then write nothing). Feeding and seating them alone can run into the hundreds of dollars per day (trust me, you don't want to know what a trade venue will charge for a cup of coffee or a bag of Cheetos). And, as savvy organizers know, some (possibly even many or most) bloggers would pay to attend the event if their press pass request was rejected. You don't want to anger this vocal minority, but you also can't afford to be taken advantage of.
For sold out events, it gets even harder. Longtime "friends" and traditional receivers of press passes may need to be sacrificed to make room for paying attendees, especially if the event relies on those last 1-200 seats for the majority of the profit margin.
Organizers know they need to be careful to be generous, but discerning, or risk becoming known for "giving free access to anyone who can set up Wordpress." They also want to try to give newcomers to the blogging/coverage scene a chance to make an impact, while being mindful of abuse and sensitive to the dangers of angering influencers. It's a tough tightrope to walk and one that press pass requesters should be more sensitive to (I'm speaking from personal experience on this one, and know that we certainly owe some apologies for past requests and perceived slights).
Optimizing the Conference Experience
Now that we're through some of the reasons events are so hard to get right, I'll try to provide some recommendations for every participant in the process. This is personal opinion, and unlike SEO, it's not based on thousands of hours of experience, but probably just a few hundred and my own observations. Still, I hope it's valuable, or, at the least, worth considering.
Advice & Experiments for Organizers
- If possible, try to shave panels down to more reasonable sizes. Both speakers and attendees will appreciate it, and those nasty timing issues that can wreck schedules and hurt moderators will get better, too.
- Great networking events should be built into more conferences. Many attendees say that the most value they get is from the networking outside the sessions (which, to my mind means the sessions need help, but that's another matter).
- This also speaks to the value of providing great areas to network during the event. Quiet areas with couches, tables, drinks and wifi can make for very happy conference goers (note: for some reason, putting these in/around the trade booths never seems to work very while, though perhaps I just haven't seen an optimal configuration).
- Select speakers more carefully. Yes, it's hard work, but it's worthwhile. And consider optimizing topics to speakers rather than the other way around - if you know that a particular individual can give an amazing experience to attendees, block off 45 minutes, email and offer to pick up a flight and/or hotel. I've been consistently shocked by who will say yes (and then feel so guilty/thankful about having their expenses covered that they'll put in twice the effort preparing and promoting) .
- Be harsh on returning speakers if their last presentation wasn't up to standards. I understand having some new blood every time, but if someone under-delivered, you need to axe them, or make it clear that the next one needs to make the audience stand up and cheer.
- Likewise, bring back great speakers more often, but make them craft new content. In my experience, great speakers seem to do well no matter the topic (so long as they have some experience/relevance to it) far more so than experienced/talented professionals correlate with great presentations on those topic.
- Try playing with venues. OMS this year moved to a new location that was 10X better than their previous spot, and my understanding is that the cost was lower, too (SEMpdx's Searchfest also had a new location in downtown Portland this year that was fantastic, though I don't know the cost differential). When you find venues that will be accommodating, magic happens because your cost structure suddenly becomes less of a burden and more of an opportunity to do creative, interesting things attendees will remember.
- Big one - don't let the room sizes dwarf the audience sizes. I was just at an event where the room could hold 1,500 people but only 200 were in the session. It feels to everyone - speakers, organizers, attendees - like there's no energy or excitement. In comparison, I was at an event a few weeks back where the room could only hold 150 and 170 squeezed in. The air felt electric and every presentation, question and tip felt alive. Optimize this one carefully because it makes a huge difference.
- Make new speakers jump through a few hoops to sell you on being installed on a panel. An impressive CV, a good blog and a high ranking title do not correlate with great presentations, but the ability to make a compelling web video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) on the topic does.
Advice & Experiments for Attendees
- If you love an event, a speaker or a session, sing it from the rooftops. Tweet, blog, write reviews, tell friends and invite colleagues next time. So many of the incentive problems described above happen because as attendees, we don't do the marketing or give the feedback we could and should.
- Don't tolerate low quality speakers/presentations, but also don't make it public. Tweeting nasty remarks about a speaker while they're on a panel shouldn't be any more acceptable than booing or throwing fruit. Make your voice heard to the organizers afterward - it will have a real impact (and if it doesn't, don't come back).
- You get out what you put in. Come with an open mind, a stack of business cards, openness to new ideas and a slough of great questions. Introduce yourself, don't be shy and make the most of networking opportunities; they often end up producing the most memorable value.
- Be the change you want to see - make sure to let organizers and speakers know what you liked and didn't via email and feedback forms. This includes venue/amenities/location/timing. None of us are clairvoyant (though Google's working on something, I hear).
Advice & Experiments for Budget Authorizers
- Give your employees freedom to choose their own events. Great people will choose wisely, and that's who you want to keep anyway.
- Let them stretch their budgets and time - at SEOmoz, we fix number of dollars and let our people do the rest. If they want to spend it all on one big trip to a conference in Fiji, go for it. If they'd prefer to optimize for multiple events closer to home, that's great, too. You'll often find employees are much more accountable if they know their budget really belongs to them.
- Ask attendees to record and share their experiences. Internal docs or wikis or a 20 minute PPT during a brown bag lunch from employees who attend events goes a long way. It will force them to take some notes and provide some actionable value back to the rest of the company and it lets the employee be the star - the one who's been somewhere and learned something no one else knows.
Advice & Experiments for Speakers
- Be empathetic - imagine yourself in the audience or better yet, remember yourself in the audience in the last session or at the last conference. What impressed you? Do that. What sucked? Avoid that.
- Go advanced - I have almost never been asked to go more basic at a search marketing event, no matter how adavanced my presentation or content gets. My takeaway is either that everything I do is way too beginner level or that audiences just love more "down-the-rabbit-hole" material. If you're on the fence, lean advanced.
- Don't pitch or present if you can't kick butt. You owe it to the audience, to the organizers and, for goodness sake, to yourself, to do an amazing job every time you're up speaking. If you're not funny or charismatic, don't sweat it - let the material do the talking.
- Fewer bullet points, less text, less time talking about each slide and less.
- More images, more screenshots, more callouts (text boxes with arrows to important stuff on a slide/screenshot), more stories and more real life examples.
- Don't ask for a business card to send someone a copy of your slide deck. Make it available online at a URL everyone can access. If your material is good enough, you'll get plenty of warm leads.
- Prepare. I'm a busy guy - no, seriously, I mean really busy - and I still take hours putting together high quality decks for even small conferences and 12 minutes presentations in half-full rooms. If you don't have the time to set aside and do great work on a presentation, you better either be incredibly naturally gifted on stage or have a team that makes great decks for you. If you can't do any of these, don't present.
- Remember you are why the event happens, you're why everyone is there, and you have a massive responsibility to deliver something that will add value for the audience. Just one or two actionable tips can tilt the balance, but don't settle for that. Do better than anyone would think possible and I promise the rewards will be tremendous. This industry is still craving excellence from its presenters and you have that chance - don't waste it.
- Experiment with taking questions in the middle of your talk, particularly if you're going longer than 20 minutes (which, sadly, is quite rare). It brings a liveliness and level of engagement that's tough to match with a purely "I'm going to talk at you" presentation.
Your Thoughts
I don't mean to be forward, but I suspect a lot of organizers, speakers and attendees in the search marketing conference space will check out this post. Please, please share your thoughts and feedback below, with one caveat - we like to keep this blog TAGFEE, so no harsh insults or personal attacks. That's what YouTube comments are for :-)
p.s. I'm just back from Searchfest in Portland (which was a terrific event that continues to get better every year). I was originally asked to give a 20 minute presentation on SEOmoz's toolset, but decided I couldn't be quite that self promotional and created a deck that covers a wider range. I saw folks giving my co-presenter, Enquisite's Richard Zwicky, a hard time over Twitter for talking all about Enquisite's software, but in fact, that's what we were asked to do and I was the one who went off-focus (so if anything, you should blame me). You can check out my slide deck here - SEO Problems and the Tool to Solve Them. Hope you enjoy and sorry about the weird formatting; Scribd didn't import PPTx very well this time.
p.p.s. Please excuse my lack of links to appropriate sites/pages/people and probably spelling errors (drove back from Portland tonight and still not over my sinus infection). Jen, if you have time early tomorrow, maybe you can help add those in? :-)
Interesting post, Rand. Some nice observations, but also some assumptions that I'd disagree with. In particular:
"More speakers = more attendees. And yes, that often holds true for even new speakers and those of low-middling quality. The reason is that speakers frequently invite clients, partners and colleagues as well as promote the event on their sites, blogs and social media accounts."
For the shows that I've programmed over the years, it hasn't been "get more speakers, that'll bring in more people." I've had panels on some sessions because much within search marketing isn't an exact science. Multiple speakers mean multiple opinions -- a diversity you want for your attendees. Do a session with one sole speaker, and you get only their viewpoint -- which others might vehemently disagree with.
So it's a nice theory. It's just one that's not playing out in my reality. That's especially so when your shows have up to 10 different coordinators who are trying to fill out sessions with good speakers. We don't say, "Hey, add these people -- we want their clients and their buzz." We say "Hey, here are pitches. Review for good ones. And if you don't see good ones, do some outreach to find good speakers."
As for panels versus solely or few speakers, at SMX, we have a mixture of these. They depend on the exact topic. And the highest rated sessions aren't always the solo speakers, nope. Like everything, it depends on the exact topic and the mix of speakers.
You also have to rate your sessions not just by what the attendees say but what you perceive. Attendees can be wowwed by a rockstar -- but if that rockstar isn't presenting good content, there's nil incentive to keep them going, if you care about the quality of your shows. Which we do.
In terms of topics, well, I guess we've been pretty successful in anticipating what would work and should be covered. You can't please everyone, and you have to make editorial decisions. The biggest issue I've had over the years is getting topics out way earlier than people were ready for. I tried to prep people for the coming of blended results literally 3 years before Google had them with Universal Search. People didn't get it. But, I thought it was worth the try. But ultimately, I guess I kind of disagree that those running large conferneces somehow have a less than ideal experience in surveying what attendees want in the way you say you do for SEOmoz seminars.
Remember, I run and editorial site, with comments and feedback from readers. I can see questions that come in, stories that do well. It's not like we're working blind :) And we do also reach out to speakers who wow us in some ways. You know that -- I've reached out to you personally on several occasions when you've been the right speaker for a topic I think is important. I've done that with a variety of speakers on other topics, too -- and plenty of them aren't "rockstars" but instead have distringuished themselves through some great writing and thoughts and deserve greater attention. That's one of my favorite things -- finding those people and getting them on stage.
Amenities are important, by the way. Food, in particular. We spend a lot of money on food. People appreciate it. That's not why they go to any confernce, but it makes the difference between a conference you endure, and one you enjoy. We want people to enjoy things. The hardest challenge is that conference venues themselves often screw things up -- WiFi in particular -- and you have relatively little control over where you can go in some cities at some times.
As to your tips for organizers. Well, we do that. Read through them all. We do all those things. The real exception was with SMX West, we had keynotes each day and had to double using the keynote hall as a session room. That led to it being way bigger. That's not the usual case, just down to venue oddities. But man, when the keynotes were on, it was packed. When Ballmer was speaking, it was standing room only
Good point about the multiple perspectives. I personally disagree with it, but I should have brought it up as a reason that organizers might choose to add many people to a panel. Search and search marketing may not be an exact science, but I've never seen five 8 minute presentations solve this better than two 20 minute presentations. If you believe in the speaker/presenter and their material, let 'em go for it - sure, there may be some biases, but this is like saying CNN/MSNBC/FOX is effectively solving for political bias by featuring a right-wing person and a left-wing person on their news shows. Perhaps you've seen value from it and your attendees like it as a way to show diversity, but I personally haven't seen the value and have only heard/seen negatives about big panels in comparison to the more focused sessions.
And I do know from talking to plenty of other organizers that "more people = more attendees" and that has to figure into their accounting. Maybe SMX doesn't think about it this way, and that's great, but I don't think you can apply your experience to all the other shows who do have this in the consideration set (and SMX certainly has many, many speakers anyway).
Totally agree on the "rockstar" name vs. quality of content - though in my post, the intent was to label the group as both "big draw" and "high value return." There's also folks who have very big names, but they don't offer that great value to the audience.
Topics - OK, sorry, maybe it is very easy for you to survey your attendees. I'd heard from others that this was a tough point to optimize around and thus included it. I don't want to suggest that if I was running something like this, I could do any better - it's inherent to the structure and timing of larger events.
On amenities - I think we're in agreement - they're important, just not what attendees "buy" based upon, and thus it's a tough issue for organizers (you want to focus on those things, but it's hard when you know it may not be the biggest ROI for your bottom line).
BTW - Don't feel like any of this is personal or even aimed at one show in particular; it's entirely the opposite. I'm trying to get speakers, attendees, people who pay to send employees to conferences and, yes, organizers, to think about all these issues. I think that, in fact, out of all the folks running shows in the search space, you're one of the few I haven't actually talked to much about this subject in person (which might be why I didn't include your perspectives as much as others).
And, finally, I obviously agree that SMX events are terrific - I attend them, pay to send employees to them, speak at them, promote them, blog about them, etc. I felt like your comment was taking offense and trying to defend when my focus was on explaining many of the motivators and inputs behind the scenes that we don't always consider. As I said in the post - if I have specific advice for a conference, session or organizer, you'll hear from me privately, not on a blog post or a tweet (and I hope others do too).
I guess we disagree on multiple perspectives, then. We should get some more perspectives about that :)
But seriously, I have to stress -- we don't run all panels. We have a mixture of formats. We have some solo presentations, especially for our Boot Camp sessions. Some panels may have only two speakers, or three, and speaking much longer than 8 minutes. It really depends on the topic being covered, not becaues of any "oh, we'd better include X number of people" motive.
I'm also not trying to apply my experience to other shows. I'm actually clarifying exactly what we do from my perspective, because this post was sounding pretty authorative about here's why all these shows do X, Y and Z -- and we're one of the ones we named. Now, you can have an opinion about why you think shows do certain things. But you really didn't qualify is as much. When you said, for example:
More speakers = more attendees.
There was no "in my opinion," or from what so-and-so of XXX conference tells me or so on. Everyone just got lumped together. And since you're speaking with such authority, I kind of felt like I'd better comment and clarify things for anyone who really wanted to know about where SMX was on some of these things.
If it feels defensive, well, you've got plenty of criticism in there which is fine. Criticism is good and helps lead to improvements. But to me, it also reads like a healthy dose of how SEOmoz's own conferences are doing it "right."
Maybe you do. Maybe you have it right, but for your particular audience, and your particular topics. But the other conferences may also have it right for the things they are trying to address. Ultimately, whether you're doing it right or wrong -- or whether those you compete with in the conference space are doing it right or wrong -- comes down to how their respective attendees feel.
Personally, I think we all tend to find our niches. I don't know that there's the perfect model for us all to follow. Things would be pretty boring if that were the case.
That was a refreshing conversation to read. Disagreements? Yes. Flaming? No. Just civil discourse with both parties explaining their positions.
Would that this could catch on ;)
Wow - yeah, I didn't intend it to read that way at all. It was meant (like all SEOmoz blog posts - see our disclaimer) to be my personal opinion culled from my experiences and talking to people in this field. I also had no intention of comparing SEOmoz's tiny little once a year events to actual conferences that have the events as a business model (vs. ours of software with events as more of a fun, not-very-profitable add-on). There's no way an SEOmoz event, in my mind, competes with SMX, SES, Pubcon, OMS, RIMC, eMetrics, Searchfest, etc. Clearly I need to do a lot of work on how I write and express these things.
Regarding criticism - again, even re-reading I thought I did an OK job trying to present cases for why the things we might complain about with conferences exist and why in many cases they're justified and correct (and in giving particularly organizers a break). I think the only group I was hard on was speakers, because I think so much responsibility rests with them. I'm not sure why that didn't come across in your parsing :(
I do appreciate you letting me (and other here) know the differences in your perceptions.
Great post, and I can't wait for Google to finish that clairvoyance feature.
I don't think power + wifi are just amenities. When they're available I spend the entire conference Tweeting & blogging. Consider it a marketing expense.
Never knew that Conferences had an incentive to include many different speakers. As an attendee I would certainly love if people like you and Marty Weintraub were speaking at many sessions. In order to find the Diamonds in the Rough, conferences can only accept new speakers who provide a link to a video where they can inform & entertain.
The "Casting" idea is cool...
on the other hand I will suggest some sort of "double session":
I mean, a experienced panelist introducing the new one and establishing a dialogue with him in front of the audience. This method (some sort of "Actor's Studio" format) can be helpful both for the newbie panelist and for the public.
Excellent food for thought - especially with a number of new conferences coming to the UK this year (SAScon immediately springs to mind)
My key measure for a good conference (from a "nearly new" speaker perspective - 3 years?!) is almost always based on the speaker panel experience. How much time do we get to discuss a subject we've spent years working on and what level of preparation have the other speakers invested in preparing a great presentation? 9 Minutes might not always be enough to really explore a concept in challenging, engaging detail.
I'd like to see conference organisers working to balance the "big names" that draw a crowd vs the new talent that are genuinely adding value to the current SEO industry conversation. On speaker quality, if a potential speaker makes a pitch to talk, I'd love to see the organiser give the speaker a quick call before approving them. That way, their suitability for the conference could be evaluated a long time before they appear for the panel.
In total agreement Richard, with the whole phone call interview process.
I have spoken in three smaller "closed doors/invitation only" events in the last few months, with tremendous response at all of them, and am now looking to speak at larger public events.
I feel I have a huge amount to offer as a speaker, however getting that first break is key for me at the moment and Im confident that a phonecall would sort the wheat from the chaff (and I've seen a fair bit of chaff in a few conferences!).
Thanks for the link to SAScon, Ive just emailled for further details on that one, might see you there!
Wow... from now I would have to call you Rand "Up in the air" Fishkin. about 100 conferences in 6 years means you attended around 1.32 conferences every month... that means to have a lot of travel miles points ;).
Even if not SEO centered, your post is for sure really interesting (and reminds me of when I was travelling from a movie festival to a tv market to a bbc or mgm screening week... that was crazy too).
From a 'attendee' point of view is surely interesting to know what's on the backstage of SEO and Search Marketing Conferences. And I understand the fact of high price tickets.
The problems is that for people like me - who are self-man-agency, somehow still moving their firm steps in the SEO arena and not living in the US or in a country where these conferences are usually held - the cost of the most interesting events, those ones you know you have to stay also for a networking matter, can be quite prohibitive.
Not that in Spain or in Italy there are no conferences (SMX organized a very good one last year in Spain), but usually they are not attended by panelist like you or the A Series ones you cited in your post.
That's why I so appreciate every kind of deep reportage about conferences I can find - for instance - in the SEOmoz blog, as it can give me the opportunity to stay up with the news (ah!, thanks for the slides), at least since when I will be able to afford the costs of attending to the most important Conferences (London here in Europe and New York and Seattle there in the US).
Until then I will especially miss the Q&A moments, as I believe they are the best thing in any kind of conference.
post scriptum: and I'm glad SEOmoz 'discovered' the webinar format and Distilled the 'online phone calls chat'
Also thanks for taking the time to write this rand! :)
Nice... I remember a couple of people attended to these conferences. Thanks rand :)
I think the combined "choose your speakers wisely, and through as much personal experience as possible" and "only speak if you can genuinely add value and have time to prepare" would get us a long way.
I have been amazed (in a good way) how much difference the personal requests from you and I to bring new decks and wow the audience has made to the quality of presentations at the PRO trainings.
Must get on with organising the next one - is this a kind of passive-aggressive nudge on that?
If not, may i urge you to get on with that?! I'm all excited now!
Here's a non-passive nudge: what's the news on the eagerly awaited SEOpro training DVD? I hear you've been busy ...
I agree about the quality of the speakers being evaluated and making presenters that return year after year write new presentations too.
One point though about room size. I was in some of the larger rooms at SMX West where smaller crowds participated. There was great interest from the 100 +/- crowd despite the fact that the hall could hold 1500. It may be hard for the speakers to feel that with the lights on, but at some point you have to trust your material. Of course when the tension built on the Link Building panel, this may have perked every one up too.
Ironically one of the worst presentations that followed yours AT SMX West had great content. You could tell that the presenter knew his material and what he wanted to say, but unfortunately it wasn't delivered in a compelling way. Public speaking is a skill, and not a gift, you can work on it.
Great post. I plan events like this for kayaking of all things, and it is really a big mixing board of factors, you have to run the slider up on some parts of the mix to see what works, and if it doesn't slide it down next year.
When I saw the title of this post I thought there was at least going to be a mention of my biggest frustration at conferences: the overabundance of consultants as speakers and near total absence of in-house folks. As an in-house SEO person I think there's a fundamental misalignment in priorities between consultants who want to look good and get leads vs. in-house people who have to keep competitive secrets and have little motivation to speak in public (unless they are looking for work that is). I've met plenty of in-house people at conferences as attendees, but have rarely seen any of them speak. I think working in-house and working as a consultant are different in so many regards, and that gap in perspective is almost solely responsible for my disinterest in most SEM events.
At SMX West (and many SMXs I've been to) they have entire tracks focused on in-house SEO and many of the presenters either currently were or had been In-house.
I like the tips for attendees a lot: it's a great insight into (some) human nature in many areas of life: when things are good, we could do so much more to spread the good word, thus making the future better for everyone. When things are bad, we often spread the bad gossip everywhere except where it might change things: in this case, in the hands of the organisers.So many now famous & great speakers / performers etc were less than brilliant in their early gigs. If we have criticism, best give it straight to them, not anyone else. It's so easy to fire off a nasty tweet but think of this: if someone close to you made a boob, would you leap at the chance to tell several hundred people about it? Probably not. For most speakers, the worst thing they've actually done is put a good deal of effort into a presentation that, for you, wasn't the best use of your time. Hardly a serious offence!
grr i want to go! :(
but i dont have $$$ and cant convince bosses... it was hard enough getting Pro. They are starting to see value now so that good
Hehehe... I so understand you ;)
Man that's a shame neo. You could totally be one of the speakers on a board panel talking about SEO tools. You should push that, and maybe a conference will offer you the travel and lodging expenses too! Then your boss would let youbgo.
Excellent!
One aspect that you didn't get to, but wish you would have, is the notion of "sponsored" speaking slots. Not sure how common that is, but my understanding is that at some conferences, many of the panels (or even solo sessions) are made up of those who we were willing to write a check.
It troubles me when folks pick speakers for something other than their expertise and ability to deliver value to the audience.
I like the "sponsored" speaking slots a lot, so long as they're presented in a transparent way. The best part about it is that the distinction is clear. If you want to pitch, buy one of those slots and if you're interested in hearing more about that product/service/company, go to those sessions. I really hope they don't do away with it, just make it obvious. I think SMX/SES have both done a good job with this, though I hear other shows have not.
Right Rand.
And more... sometimes a transparentely declared sponsored slot can be even more interesting than a not one.
The sure thing is that - for instance - if Yahoo! is sponsoring a speaking slot about their PPC system or analytics tool I would't mind the "sponsor" thing, but what and how they can explain me their product/service.
I think every conference has had "stealth" sponsored speaking slots. I'm in a SEO session one minute and the next minute, a sales guy is up there speaking on why we should buy their product.
I have seen a lot less of these in the past year. This is probably because event organizers are reaching out to the attendees so I will just complain about the speaker to them and I tell my buddies to do the same.
But I wouldn't mind having sponsored speaking slots if it was clearly labeled as such, along with the sponsoring company.
Nice Rand. A long read yet it's worth it!
Good stuff Rand. Interestingly Bas van den Beld wrote something similar a few days ago on State of Search: https://www.stateofsearch.com/five-tips-for-search-conference-organizers-to-please-your-visitors/
This post comes in at a great time especially since we been planning for Search Exchange in Charlotte.
We're working on giving speakers more time (20-25mins) to present and sitting on a panel afterwards.
Images/stories are probably what ppl will remember than the bullet points on the slides.
We have been spending more time finding good speakers who already have prior conference speaking. We also making it a point that speakers should deliver unique information not rehashed from their old presentations.
We're hoping to have a strong moderator for each panel to pull out the meat from the presentations (if needed)
Great post!
Pretty swanky affair Robert! Is this event your baby?
It is ....also have another person helping me out (@KeithSchilling)
tried to get Rand to come but he's too busy :( lol
I may have to post another article here...and get it featured for him to make some time :P
Although Rand won't be there, Joanna will be! :)
Amazing. And really practical things, as usual.
While I've never been to an SEO event, your points are still spot on for the industry events I've been involved with throughout my multiple careers.
My personal favorites as an attendee were (and are) the after hours informal parties/dinners/etc. It's where I've made my closest friendships.
Great job Rand! Especially since I am working on where I can improve as a speaker, planning my conferences as an attendee and looking to improve the Miva Merchant conference next year.
So when is the SEOmoz conference/seminar this year so I can get it on the calendar?
Our next SEOmoz conference in Seattle will be in August. We don't have the exact dates quite yet.
Well... I hope your organization will be able to spread the news soon... Seattle is 5450 miles, 3 airplanes, and 9 hours jet lag from my sweet home in Valencia (Spain)... :( as you can imagine something that has to be planned finely.
Wow! That's definitely understandable. :) We'll announce the date soon, but we won't have specific information until June. We do also have training in London that we do with the Distilled crew in October (that's when it was last year) so that might work for you as well. Not that we don't want to see you here in Seattle!
heheh... I know that Jennita...
the fact is that Seattle is also a place I want to see since I was watching at Frasier and listening to Nirvana in my 20s :).
But surely London would be easier and the one I'll probably will appoint myself to.