Never Ending Eventing

Never in living memory has there been so much conversation about communication. Marketing and Technology both had plenty of industry conferences in the past. Since they’ve mashed up, it feels like we are all now in the event business. Speaking, attending, following. *Exhausting*. You can even track the trends just by watching the new titles roll out from professional event companies like Haymarket and DMG.

Always on hashtags
But there is a lovely twist to this all you can eat symposium smorgasbord. Several of the more grassrootsy events are true communities rather than trade shows. More Burning Man, than ad:tech.
For most events, the hashtag comes and goes. Twitter search won’t pull up tweets more than a few days old. With serial events like #media140, #140conf, and the aptly named #LikeMinds, the hashtag is always fresh. Not only are they based on a series of conferences, they have meetups, tweetups, and lots of @ing in-between. It’s lovely.

Active attendees
Private, participatory events, like WPP’s Stream, share this belief that the community makes the unconference. Mega events, like the ever more popular SXSW,  take it to the people via their Panel Picker. While SXSW is not until March, the blogosphere is alive with buzz right now as we all canvas for votes from our peers. Me too. More on that next post.

With luck I will see y’all in Texas, but it could be equally inspiring to meetup right here.