If this is your first time here, why not consider subscribing to my RSS feed?

Etech 2006 Thoughts - Prepping to Jump The Shark?

Posted on March 16, 2006
Filed Under Daily Links, O'Reilly Etech |

So my time in San Diego is at an end (heading over to Austin for SXSW) and I’m trying to recap O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference 2006. To me it seemeed to run at a slower pace this year, but then because I’m in the USA for more than just ETech, I’m pacing myslef very very carefully. I know I was personally going a bit slower, but having talked to others, it wasn’t just me, the event didn’t have the same buzz as previous years.

It’s not a “Jump The Shark” situation, but behind the closed doors of Sebastaopl, thre’s going to be a very eventful breakdown of the event. One of the main areas for discussion is the increase in attendees. With roughly 1200 this year, compared to 750 last years, that increase of 450 people skewed the percentages away from the geeks towards suits - which was a great inhibitor to the hall conversations.

The size of the Hotel was contentious in both directions. The Manchester Grand Hyatt is a big Hotel, perhaps too big. Did O’Reilly need to increase the numbers of attendees? A good question. What’s surprising to me is what the Hotel could not (would not?) supply. The lack of chairs was a big one. If there were more than 40 chairs or sofa spaces in the entire Hall. If you start counting the power sockets, then maybe there was one socket for every chair. Maybe.

ETech is naturally going to get bigger every year, and that means that the ratio of alpha geeks and developers to sutis, VC’s and ‘enjoying the trip’ people is going to drop, and I think this is the biggest question / challenge to Tim and his team in preparing for ETech 2007. Is it a conference to watch geeks, or to discuss with business people what they are up to? I think 2006 tried to accomodate both, and partially failed.

Did I derive value? Sure - after all look at the podcasts from ETech that are still going up. If I had paid $1000 would I be as happy? Probably not. But then, a lot of the suts are able to write that grand off. For me, there was nothing truly inspiring, perhaps calling it Consolidating Technology would make it feel more appropriate. I can’t believe there’s nothing more to emerge from the crowd this year, but I couldn’t see this years Flickr.

Comments

Leave a Reply