Comparing the Microsoft PDC conference with Lotusphere...
Category Microsoft IBM/Lotus
So I've spent the last five days getting inundated with information about where Microsoft is going in the next two years. My thoughts on the technology will be a different blog post, but I thought it might be interesting to compare how the conferences were run. Not having a huge pool of conference experience, it was hard *not* to compare PDC to Lotusphere. But here are a few of my observations...
Meals - Both conferences do a nice job on meal planning. When you're serving thousands in the course of 60 to 120 minutes, you better have your act together. For all intents and purposes, both conferences shine there. I'd give a slight nod to PDC for having pop (both regular and diet) on ice for all meals. I loved knowing that I didn't have to track down a diet Coke/diet Pepsi somewhere before breakfast.
Breaks - PDC had it all over Lotusphere in this case. There was coffee, juice, fruit, pop, and snacks laid out for consumption from 6:30 in the morning until the final conference session at 6:30 at night. And if you wanted a higher-end coffee experience, there was a Starbucks kiosk right there on premises. I know many attendees would be happy with just having coffee available at all times. I was overjoyed to see refrigerated cases in numerous places, kept fully stocked. Apples, oranges, and bananas were always there too. For snacks, they usually had granola bars (different flavors each day), chips, cookies, yogurt covered pretzels, Twinkies, Hostess cupcakes, etc. Basically, if you needed something to munch on, it was there.
Transportation - a tossup. I never had to wait for a bus from my hotel to the convention center, or from the convention center back to the hotel. Given that some of them had to navigate through LA traffic, it was impressive. They started running busses at 6:45 am (breakfast at 7), and often ran until 10'ish. The downside is that they stop running altogether between like 10:30 am and 5. They also had free bus shuttles back to the airport. You could just see the taxi drivers seething over THAT one.
Conference swag - It's hard to beat the 160GB external USB hard drive that had all the latest and greatest Microsoft pre-beta stuff on it. On the flip side, their conference "bag" was something you'd find in a supermarket as an eco-friendly replacement for paper and plastic. Needless to say, that didn't come home with me. The vendor area seemed much smaller than Lotusphere, but the Microsoft area for their own products and hands-on labs was the same size (if not bigger) as the vendor area. It was cool to see beanbag chairs tossed all over the place, and people banging away on xBox games. The conference store was also rather large, with a lot in the way of book offerings and other stuff.
Audience - PDC is very targeted... new stuff from Microsoft, geeks abound. It seemed to be about the same size as Lotusphere, but the demographics were very different. At Lotusphere, you have a fair number of attendees that fall into the female gender category. Not so at PDC. I would be shocked if the percentage of women made it into the double digit range. I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 5%. Very strange...
Conference videos - EVERY session is recorded. EVERY session is available for download from the PDC site 24 hours after it's given. Let me state that again... EVERY. SESSION. IS. RECORDED. AND. IS. AVAILABLE. FOR. DOWNLOAD. BY. THE. ATTENDEES. If I could wish for any PDC feature to be copied by Lotusphere, this would be it.
Content - Lotusphere has something for everyone. You may not like the ratios given your particular interest or function, but they try and cover it all, from strategy to bleeding edge to best practices. Beginner to advanced. PDC is much more targeted to geeks and those who make their living with MS technology. If you're just getting started with MS stuff, or if you want to go back and start using the stuff today, this may not be the best place for you. I got exposed to a lot, but I'll be the first to admit that much was over my head when it came to details. PDC also does a great job with ad-hoc "unsession" stuff. There's plenty of space to have spur of the moment meetings and sessions run by the attendees themselves. I guess that PDC had more of a "geek vibe" to it than Lotusphere often does. Not to say that Lotusphere doesn't have its share of geeks. There just seemed to be more of them at PDC.
Miscellaneous - I loved how there was an area to check your luggage on the final day at the convention center. Probably not as critical at Lotusphere since the event is held at hotels. When I went to pick up my luggage to head to the airport, it looked like disembarkation on a cruise. MILES of luggage lined up...
Most of all, I came away with an even greater appreciation for what it takes to pull off a conference the size of Lotusphere or PDC. It's amazing that 9K to 10K people can come together and learn without tearing the place up or having the organizers swear "never again". My hat is off to the Lotusphere group for what they do for us each year...
So I've spent the last five days getting inundated with information about where Microsoft is going in the next two years. My thoughts on the technology will be a different blog post, but I thought it might be interesting to compare how the conferences were run. Not having a huge pool of conference experience, it was hard *not* to compare PDC to Lotusphere. But here are a few of my observations...
Meals - Both conferences do a nice job on meal planning. When you're serving thousands in the course of 60 to 120 minutes, you better have your act together. For all intents and purposes, both conferences shine there. I'd give a slight nod to PDC for having pop (both regular and diet) on ice for all meals. I loved knowing that I didn't have to track down a diet Coke/diet Pepsi somewhere before breakfast.
Breaks - PDC had it all over Lotusphere in this case. There was coffee, juice, fruit, pop, and snacks laid out for consumption from 6:30 in the morning until the final conference session at 6:30 at night. And if you wanted a higher-end coffee experience, there was a Starbucks kiosk right there on premises. I know many attendees would be happy with just having coffee available at all times. I was overjoyed to see refrigerated cases in numerous places, kept fully stocked. Apples, oranges, and bananas were always there too. For snacks, they usually had granola bars (different flavors each day), chips, cookies, yogurt covered pretzels, Twinkies, Hostess cupcakes, etc. Basically, if you needed something to munch on, it was there.
Transportation - a tossup. I never had to wait for a bus from my hotel to the convention center, or from the convention center back to the hotel. Given that some of them had to navigate through LA traffic, it was impressive. They started running busses at 6:45 am (breakfast at 7), and often ran until 10'ish. The downside is that they stop running altogether between like 10:30 am and 5. They also had free bus shuttles back to the airport. You could just see the taxi drivers seething over THAT one.
Conference swag - It's hard to beat the 160GB external USB hard drive that had all the latest and greatest Microsoft pre-beta stuff on it. On the flip side, their conference "bag" was something you'd find in a supermarket as an eco-friendly replacement for paper and plastic. Needless to say, that didn't come home with me. The vendor area seemed much smaller than Lotusphere, but the Microsoft area for their own products and hands-on labs was the same size (if not bigger) as the vendor area. It was cool to see beanbag chairs tossed all over the place, and people banging away on xBox games. The conference store was also rather large, with a lot in the way of book offerings and other stuff.
Audience - PDC is very targeted... new stuff from Microsoft, geeks abound. It seemed to be about the same size as Lotusphere, but the demographics were very different. At Lotusphere, you have a fair number of attendees that fall into the female gender category. Not so at PDC. I would be shocked if the percentage of women made it into the double digit range. I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 5%. Very strange...
Conference videos - EVERY session is recorded. EVERY session is available for download from the PDC site 24 hours after it's given. Let me state that again... EVERY. SESSION. IS. RECORDED. AND. IS. AVAILABLE. FOR. DOWNLOAD. BY. THE. ATTENDEES. If I could wish for any PDC feature to be copied by Lotusphere, this would be it.
Content - Lotusphere has something for everyone. You may not like the ratios given your particular interest or function, but they try and cover it all, from strategy to bleeding edge to best practices. Beginner to advanced. PDC is much more targeted to geeks and those who make their living with MS technology. If you're just getting started with MS stuff, or if you want to go back and start using the stuff today, this may not be the best place for you. I got exposed to a lot, but I'll be the first to admit that much was over my head when it came to details. PDC also does a great job with ad-hoc "unsession" stuff. There's plenty of space to have spur of the moment meetings and sessions run by the attendees themselves. I guess that PDC had more of a "geek vibe" to it than Lotusphere often does. Not to say that Lotusphere doesn't have its share of geeks. There just seemed to be more of them at PDC.
Miscellaneous - I loved how there was an area to check your luggage on the final day at the convention center. Probably not as critical at Lotusphere since the event is held at hotels. When I went to pick up my luggage to head to the airport, it looked like disembarkation on a cruise. MILES of luggage lined up...
Most of all, I came away with an even greater appreciation for what it takes to pull off a conference the size of Lotusphere or PDC. It's amazing that 9K to 10K people can come together and learn without tearing the place up or having the organizers swear "never again". My hat is off to the Lotusphere group for what they do for us each year...
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Comments
Lotus used to have two conferences as well: Lotusphere and DevCon. DevCon was more focused on developers. I believe that it was merged into IBM developerWorks Live.
Posted by Bob Congdon At 15:08:44 On 30/10/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Karen Hobert At 17:23:57 On 30/10/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Keith Brooks At 06:35:32 On 31/10/2008 | - Website - |
LMAO!
Maybe I have read your post wrong, but it seems to me that the "little things," like the breaks, weigh more heavily on how well a person will like a conference. The content, location, food are probably equal no matter the conference, but the accessibility of refreshments, ad-hoc meeting space, and a drive full of software would makes PDC a hit with attendees.
I'm interested in how they carved out the ad-hoc meeting space. And handled conflicts with the resources.
Nice write up.
Posted by Gregg Eldred At 09:33:32 On 31/10/2008 | - Website - |
The ad-hoc stuff was interesting. Imagine a 100' x 100' area (size isn't that important) with chairs and couches clustered in groups of 10 to 15. Stick a whiteboard next to each grouping. First come, first serve. Either presentations on topics, or a general "technology X experts will be here at 3:00 pm to answer questions" gathering. Vendors were also doing it with a bit more formality. They'd sometimes have small handouts stating when these short sessions would appear at their displays.
I'm sure there's more to it than that, and it may or may not be something that works. But if it's in the flow of where everyone is (like the vendor showcase - not tucked off in the YBC), it can potentially work.
Posted by Duffbert At 09:48:46 On 31/10/2008 | - Website - |
@2: Sorry I missed you there, Karen. Yes, carbs were the overwhelming choice, unless you happened to wander by when they were unloading the jerky packages. :) Hard drive, way cool. Metal bottle... I thought the same thing about ditching plastic with the BPA concerns. Didn't realize it was made in China. In addition to lead, I guess I should have it tested for melatin. :)
@3: If someone reading this from IBM thinks it's worthy of Sandra's consideration, I'm sure they'll bring it to her attention. I'm under no illusions that I know how to run a conference better than they do, and many of these types of decisions are already made when you're just 10 weeks out from the event. I also imagine that the conference costs are to some degree subsidized by the company holding it, and it's hard to compete with a company that can blow $10 million on an ad spokesman, blow $300 million on an ad campaign, and still bring in billions on a quarterly basis.
Posted by Duffbert At 09:57:42 On 31/10/2008 | - Website - |