David Spark: "My main argument is everyone in the room is already a WordPress blogger yet many of the presenters are talking to us like we're newbie bloggers and we're not familiar with the technology or concepts of blogging. The reason I came and I believe the reason everyone else here came is to discover what's new about blogging. I haven't yet learned anything new, but I'm meeting some good people."
If your conference or unconference (and there is a crucial difference, even though some people would like to blur those) is about teaching 'the basics', then you need to really, clearly explain that to people. Because for those of us who aren't beginners, any type of education has to be worth more than Google.
This is why I chose not to go and get a MA/MSc (it could have been the former if I'd spent it reading Kierkegaard, the latter if I'd noodled around with computers) this year is because the costs are too high and the benefits compared with just Googling are too low. This is especially true for technology - with open specifications, open source, blogs, wikis and mailing lists.
What, then, for conferences? Provide actual vision. How is this stuff going to affect humanity? And that means all of humanity, not just Eric Schmidt and a bunch of Valley VCs. The fact that I can search the world's libraries from my desktop has not returned on any VC investment, but it is important. And we need to talk as users about where we go next.
We really need BloggerCon London. Conferences are lumbering around. BarCamp and BloggerCon has sliced it's head half-off (those who are ignoring their RSS feeds to read Harry Potter will appreciate that). We need to mercifully finish the job so that conferences can become interesting.
