Last year was my first Gnomedex conference. (It’s an annual event put on by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo and family, and is billed as a place where one might tap into the tech blogging world’s zeitgeist). After my experience last year, I changed the way I did business, and was immediately rewarded for my efforts. I also met great people, developed some close friendships, and felt all the way around educated. This year was even better.
You need to go to Gnomedex next year.
I’ll tell you that the quality of most of the presentations on the stage felt like the stuff I’d expect at TED. From Scott Maxwell who taught us what it’s like to drive the Mars Rover by remote programming to Amanda Koster who runs a unique garage, to the amazing Beth Kanter raising yet another year of college tuition for a woman in Cambodia, the stage was nearly always the scene of the most amazing ideas and speakers I’d seen anywhere.
The mix of topics, the quality of the presentations, the somehow “next generation” feeling of the audience all made me feel stellar and engaged the entire time. I got to meet lots of new faces, and finally connected with people I had yet to meet. I felt the sponsors were engaged and part of the community, especially Ann Finney from HP, who is now racking up quite a habit of being where the community events happen.
I have another post to write, but this one was just to say that I found Gnomedex to be the single-most valuable conference for me and my own personal and professional development that I’ve attended in the last 12 months. (In saying this, I realize that I’m rating it over my very own PodCamp Boston and several other events where I know and love the organizers. To you, I say, “I loved your events as well. They were also useful to me.”)
It will be interesting to see what comes next year, and I will certainly plan to attend. You should, too.
The next event I’m running myself is the New Marketing Bootcamp in Boston in a few weeks. I’m sure I’ll find ways to apply some of what I learned to that event.
(Another post coming later tonight).
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Hi Chris,
Your blog post made me think of a topic suggestion for a future blog post from you (am I being greedy or what? :)
I would love to see a post where you give a synopsis of the top 5 conferences/events you recommend people attend and why. Or just a comparison of the 5-10 “buzziest” events. As someone who can only afford to go to maybe 1-2 a year because I am paying out of my own pocket, it is hard to decide for example should I go to SXSW or Gnomedex or something else altogether.
It would be helpful if I knew for example which one was great for having inspiring/cutting edge presenters to those that are great because of their networking value.
Thanks!
–A
Thanks Chris for the overview! Shashi was there soaking it up.
I’m excited about the opportunity to attend BlogWorld next month & finally meet everyone. Your conference suggestions here are invaluable.
Thanks for keeping us up to date!
Connie
I don’t believe this but I was going to leave a message with the EXACT same question as Amrita! I wanted to get your opinion of the five most valuable conferences you go to with these caveats:
1) You have to have gone to the conference at least once in the past 5 years;
2) You can have offered a presentation but not be the organizer of any of the 5;
3) They must be national conferences not specific to your particular region of the country; and
4) They aren’t narrow, that is, they draw people from different areas of the tech/business/media/pr world together instead of just specialists in a given niche occupation.
Since there seems to be at least one conference going on every week, now that I’ve been reading your blog for a while, I’d really like to hear from you which ones you get the most out of.
So, two votes for this idea!
Chris,
I agree with Amrita & Liz (make that 3 votes). There are so many conferences and expos out there today, that’s it’s very difficult to decide which to attend. Should you decide to do a post as suggested, I’d ask for top 10 along with a list of typical attendees, purpose and what your key takeaways were, who should attend and why. Given your extensive network, if you could also poll a couple of folks to see what their top suggestions are, that would be helpful as well.
Like so many, I value your experience and your opinion and often look to you for leadership on matters of social media.
Are any of the segments / presentations archived on any video service anywhere?
Chris,
Fantastic! It was so terrific to meet you in person! You complimented me on my comment during Sarah’s session about passion in blogging - and I had to try not to gush too overtly, I was thrilled! It was an amazing two days and I’m still floating on the energy high. Have fun in Boston, I’m sure it will be tremendous.
Chris, thanks for the nice recap - Gnomedex also reminded me of TED this year. I enjoyed reading this and your post about using comedy to connect with people (I could not agree more). So, you’ve found your way into my feed subscriptions. :-) I look forward to reading more from you.
Great meeting you at Gnomedex, take care!
I tried to watch as much as I could over the live stream. I’m such a dork but I was so excited when Matt came on to talk about his dancing around the world, I actually made my housemate come over to watch. And then the stream dropped just as everyone got on the stage to dance!
I was so impressed by what I did see of the talks. I’m going to try hard to get to next year’s conference.
Thanks!