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A few thoughts and ideas for next NN
Great job by the organizers! A few ideas and thoughts...
1) An easy fix for the problem of too few people visiting the exhibitor hall is simply to have food
and coffee/tea there, and someone suggested downthread. Cheap stuff
is fine: even packaged crap from Costco or something. But where
there's food and caffeine, people will congregate. A map of exhibitor
booths would also be nice. Also, for exhibitors, something that other
conferences do is have special games with nice prizes (free
registration next conference, iTouch, etc.) which, in order to win,
you have to visit all the booths to get answers to specific
questions. That helps, too.
2) Don't cut the number of panels! I *loved* the panels this year--
such a wide range of diverse topics, and with lots of figures directly
from the netroots. The most valuable panels I went to were the small
ones that touched on direct action I could take to help a campaign or
organization or to promote a blog or what-not; I would hate to see
those disappear as panels got restricted to basically only the "big"
names. One of the big complaints from Chicago was the number of
panels that were done by outside groups and media celebrities, and not
nearly enough done by beloved community members in their specialties.
3) To solve the "too many panels to choose from" problem, simply make
sure that *all* the panels are recorded on web video for further
viewing, and that the panel organizer's email be provided in case
there are questions from those who had to view the panel afterwards.
4) I think the complaint with the Pelosi thing is that she was allowed
to totally evade a couple of questions. Last year, she explained as
best as she could why she thought impeachment was a bad idea. We may
not have agreed, but she gave us the respect of an answer. This year,
she simply refused to answer the question about inherent comtempt--and
in so doing, showed not disagreement with but simply contempt for her
audience.
5) Keeping costs down by limiting in-conference food, while allowing
for food breaks was an excellent idea. Solves the food problem pretty
much. Also, using the city to stage parties and events was also
excellent. I hope both of these practices are repeated in Pittsburgh.
1) An easy fix for the problem of too few people visiting the exhibitor hall is simply to have food
and coffee/tea there, and someone suggested downthread. Cheap stuff
is fine: even packaged crap from Costco or something. But where
there's food and caffeine, people will congregate. A map of exhibitor
booths would also be nice. Also, for exhibitors, something that other
conferences do is have special games with nice prizes (free
registration next conference, iTouch, etc.) which, in order to win,
you have to visit all the booths to get answers to specific
questions. That helps, too.
2) Don't cut the number of panels! I *loved* the panels this year--
such a wide range of diverse topics, and with lots of figures directly
from the netroots. The most valuable panels I went to were the small
ones that touched on direct action I could take to help a campaign or
organization or to promote a blog or what-not; I would hate to see
those disappear as panels got restricted to basically only the "big"
names. One of the big complaints from Chicago was the number of
panels that were done by outside groups and media celebrities, and not
nearly enough done by beloved community members in their specialties.
3) To solve the "too many panels to choose from" problem, simply make
sure that *all* the panels are recorded on web video for further
viewing, and that the panel organizer's email be provided in case
there are questions from those who had to view the panel afterwards.
4) I think the complaint with the Pelosi thing is that she was allowed
to totally evade a couple of questions. Last year, she explained as
best as she could why she thought impeachment was a bad idea. We may
not have agreed, but she gave us the respect of an answer. This year,
she simply refused to answer the question about inherent comtempt--and
in so doing, showed not disagreement with but simply contempt for her
audience.
5) Keeping costs down by limiting in-conference food, while allowing
for food breaks was an excellent idea. Solves the food problem pretty
much. Also, using the city to stage parties and events was also
excellent. I hope both of these practices are repeated in Pittsburgh.
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Inappropriate?#1 - Agree .. I made the same comment on the way home with my friend. That is what my professional organization did... coffee/tea/rolls in the morning in the exhibit hall, booze in the afternoon.. Lots of foot traffic. Just moving the coffee/tea into the room in the morning would bring in people and traffic.
#2/3 - Agree .. I loved the panels. But it was tough to choose some times. If everthing was recorded, make a DVD available (for a minimal fee) for those of us who are computer challenged re on-line video or slow dial up computers.
#4 .. I thought Pelosi did a fine job, and respect her for showing up with such a format. And Gina had some good followup questions. She is a politician.. Duh. Can you imagine the uproar in the press if we had been rude and angry to Pelosi? Get real folks.
#5. Keeping the costs down... Hard for some of us seniors to make it. Someone suggested a student and senior rate for registration, which I think would be wonderful. RE the food thing, I actually thought having a box lunch HELPED with my costs - compared to last year. If you could get the vendors to do some small breakfast items along with coffee and tea, then attendees could only worry about dinner. I liked the fact that there was places to go within walking distance. I would like to see a more formal document (with maps) of the places to eat within walking distance along with an idea of the prices. I printed off some of the diary's which were very helpful, but would have been nice with a map.
Grandma Jo1 Comment
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Sponsored meals would be cool, if the sponsor could toss their logo on the boxes. -
Inappropriate?I think it would be valuable to post each of these as a separate suggestion. That way you could give them titles that reflect the suggestions, so people would see them and more easily find them, and each one could have comments on that specific idea rather than mixing them all up in one thread. -
Inappropriate?We are definitely looking at ways to bump up foot traffic in the hall next year ... adding coffee or food, hosting events in the hall, providing a map in advance, etc. are all great ideas.
We're going to look at the number of panels next year -- not sure if we'll cut or not, but we'll definitely have them video recorded again. Our video archive should be up within a couple of weeks.
How much food we can provide is a result of the cost of catering in our host city, so we don't know just yet what we'll do. But, we will likely have at least a few meal spots open so that attendees can explore the surrounding area. The convention center in Pittsburgh has about 100 restaurants within a 5 or 10-minute walk. -
Inappropriate?I like the map idea and food idea. Making it a place where people have to come through...aslo good.
Commonweal did it right by having it well manned and lots of goodies.
The vendor who had jars of salsa but no chips and was not at their own booth every time I went, missed a big opportunity. I didn't know if I could take the salsa or they were selling it and didn't want to steal. Only one vendor left a note on the table letting us know what was going on.
Part of the problem was location and lack of traffic but I think a bigger issue was the exhibitors were away from their booths so much we couldn't find out about their products!
Then many who manned them couldn't operate their laptops properly and if you are demoing software, for example, you need to have someone who knows how to demo it properly.
They need to follow the 3 points in 9 seconds or less and 28/29 words or less in getting their message across or the potential client is off to the next booth. Some vendors were rude too. That transcriptionist lady in back would not even talk about what she was there for. She just pointed to something on the table. WTF? I didn't get that at all.
I appreciated the Progressive Book Club food that one day.
I made it a point to visit each booth even if I was already a client of that vendor, just to let them know that we appreciate the sponsorship.
My favorite was LiePie.com.
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