May 12th, 2009 |
We’re pushing hard to get the VoiceCon Virtual Event together, but we’re also gearing up to begin our planning cycle for VoiceCon San Francisco, which takes place November 2-5, 2009 at the Moscone North Convention Center. This is going to be a big effort because we’ve decided to really overhaul the program for San Francisco.
We’re not going to be changing focus, but we are changing our approach. The impetus is the fact that, as everyone knows, justifying travel expenses is getting harder and harder. We believe we’ve got compelling content, but what we needed to do was make sure every last second of the San Francisco event–and all other VoiceCons moving forward–represents something you can’t get any other way besides getting on a plane and flying to our show. We think that, given the advances in technologies like video, social networking, Second Life and so forth, that travel will probably always require a strong justification, even when the economy turns around and budgets ease up a bit.
So to start our planning, we got back to basics: We’ve got a building, and we’ve got three and a half days. What can we put into that place and time?
We’ve begun answering that question in broad terms: There should be demo sessions; you can get demos on the show floor, but having something like a hands-on experience from a third-party, objective instructor is even more valuable. We should make sure attendees have as many opportunities as possible to get face time, in groups as small as possible, with experts that they simply don’t come into contact with in their daily lives in the office.
We’re about to begin the process of translating these ideas into a plan that can actually deliver these opportunities to our attendees. As always, we welcome your suggestions about things you’d like to see at the show. Now’s the time to speak up–we’re open to everything.
