LOGICal eMOTIONs

My How You’ve Changed…

// December 30th, 2007 // Blog & Tech Items, Brain Dump

I noticed on Liz’s main blog that some details have been released about the next installment of SOBCon08, of which I have been eagerly awaiting. I missed the conference last year with great disappointment and attendance at this years was top priority.

Some initial details have been released (Liz has no doubt been fielding many emails inquiring about the next conference) and two of them seemed to jump out at me…

The first one was the mentioning that it will be a “biz school for bloggers” which I find pretty narrow in terms of the blogging spectrum. At first I wonder if it may be too specific considering that nobody has made, or is making significant coin from their blog. Sure, some large company blogs with many writers employed full time are making some serious money (I think…), however, the majority of bloggers are the exact opposite. It’s you, it’s me, it’s the guy over there pounding out translations from our brain for absolutely everyone or no one to read. The vast majority of bloggers are in it for just about every imaginable reason except money. Much like actual business, if you’re not running it like a business then it isn’t a business…

The other item which leaped out at me was the mention that this years conference is “Invitation Only” with special preference given to last years attendees… I get the part about last years attendees being given first crack at the tickets considering they were the actual ones that made the first SOBCon a success, and as long as the total number of tickets this year exceeds the total from last year (growth is good) I still think it is a brilliant idea.

The “invite only” bit does leave me with a few question marks popping up in the brain…

Say (FOR EXAMPLE!) there were 100 attendees last year and there are 100 seats available for this conference. If we say 75% are only able to attend this year, the first 75 seats are already gone leaving 25. That’s twenty five seats available to the rest of the world! Good luck getting a ticket for the few 25, but now the rules have changed because the whole world isn’t competing – it’s now invite only. For some reason there will be a request page in the future, to which I can only guess that we request a ticket and hope that we’re on the “A List” so that we can actually attend.

Now this isn’t about whether or not I have enough “street-cred” to be eligible for an invitation, simply because I haven’t really thought about it. It’s about the fact that this now means SOBCon is a closed event to everyone who wasn’t an original attendee or isn’t heavily entrenched in the SOBCon circle of influence.

So is this good or bad? Well, it’s neither. See there are two paths we could go down and would have dramatically different results.

The first path we could get all emotional about it, call Liz nasty names, and put all SOBCon supporters on your black list. No doubt some actually will successfully complete all parts with flying colours and it is what it is.

The other option is to remember that SOBCon is it’s own entity started by someone other than you, and the future/agenda is whatever SOBCon decides is best. Not saying that SOBCon is Google, however, I am reminded of the backlash that Google got when it made some changes to it’s listings. Google essentially stated that if you used a direct competitor to AdWords on your site that your site would no longer be listed with Google.

Sure there are those that went off the deep end accusing Google of whatever, but the fact still remains that Google is a privately owned company and is allowed to dictate the terms of their service. Think of it like car companies stating that you have to used manufacturer approved parts or the warranty is void. Why pay your competitor a profit? It’s the same deal with Google, and really, it’s the same deal with SOBCon. Not the competitor angle, but the simple fact that SOBCon is it’s own business free to decide how to run their own event.

Want to reserve seats to reward your original attendees? Great. Want the remaining tickets to be dolled out by invite only? Great. The point is that the terms can be set to whatever they want and the only way you’ll get in is if you agree to those terms. Don’t agree – you ain’t goin. I mean really, when you think about it, you could have some really interesting ways to have people qualify for a ticket… Hrm…

But anyways. So guess who likely isn’t going to SOBCon08? Yup. Colleen and I had talked about a month ago about going this year but an entire conference about “biz school for bloggers” is a bit much for this simple bit of internet which is desperately trying to not resemble a business in any fashion. Then again, the business angle would be extremely beneficial to Colleen – but wait, throw in the whole ticket issue… argh.

Photo by RichardAM

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