On Saturday I wrote how R3R was awarded a free ‘scholarship’ pass to BizTechDay, a new conference aimed at entrepreneurs who want to harness technology to promote and grow their businesses. On Sunday I attended the conference, it’s taken me a few days to sit down and share my thoughts on the (mostly) successful event, but here they are.
Well…first let me preface by saying that even though I’m a small business owner myself, I’m not quite part of the target demographic for this conference. The audience was largely small business owners with little or no experience in internet marketing or doing business on the web. In all honesty we at R3R have more interest in speaking at an event like this, and will look for opportunities to do so the next time around. The reason I attended the event was to put myself in our clients’ shoes, and possibly meet a few prospective clients while doing so. So, I evaluated the event from the perspective of our clients and potential clients, as well as from our own service provider perspective (where networking was a priority).
[Good] Convenient Location: I’m a little biased on this one. I walked to and from the event at the Hilton in Union Square on an incredible October day in San Francisco.
[Good] Impressive Speaker Line-up: For a first-time conference, my hat goes off to BizTechDay. They landed an impressive list of speakers, including Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek (review)), George Wright (of YouTube ‘Will it Blend’ fame), Megan Casey of Squidoo.com, Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com, and more. As I’ve mentioned here before, Tim Ferriss’ book inspired us to experiment with outsourcing and virtual assistants, enabling us to keep our firm small, and operations streamlined. One of the more informative speakers I saw was Allen Weinberg of Glenbrook, who talked about some insightful differences (such as user base demographics and user acceptance) between online payment options such as PayPal, Bill Me Later, and others.
[Good] Smooth Operation: I can’t even imagine all the coordination that must go on when planning a business/technology conference for the first time. PR, scheduling, marketing, signing up speakers, reserving space, communicating with attendees, and a million other things I’m sure I haven’t even thought of. And I have to say, I give the organizers of the first BizTechDay credit for pulling it off.
[Bad] Networking Space Under-utilized: The event was arranged so that all of the speaker sessions took place in one of two rooms (one large; one small). The only other open space was the hallway connecting the two rooms (where registration took place, where the Barnes & Noble booth was set up, and where coffee and tea were available). In my mind, this hallway is where the sponsors’ exhibit booths should have been set up, and where other all other networking opportunities should have been located. For some reason the sponsors’ booths were located in the large conference rooms, where networking opportunities were limited to time between speaker sessions. The real value of a conference like this is in the networking – the ability to meet fellow conference attendees. I hope the BizTechDay team takes this into consideration next time.
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