Yesterday I attended the first annual Internet Summit in Chapel Hill NC. I was excited to see that an event of this type was able to draw a crowd of over 600 attendees. A quick search this morning turned up only a few posts about the event.
Following my initial enthusiasm, I quickly became underwhelmed by the old-school atmosphere of the event. Every session, with the exception of the opening keynotes, were panel discussions, considered by many to be one of the weakest presentation formats. There was little opportunity for the “audience” to participate. The one exception was Jim Tobin using Twitter during his session to field questions. Yes, the other sessions did take questions, but it was always just a couple of quick ones during the last 5 minutes. Not what I call engaging the audience.
Another thing that bothered me was that there was a strong theme, in the sessions I attended, toward using the internet only as a customer acquisition tool; CPC, Page views, traffic, conversion, etc. I heard almost no one talking about how online tools can also be used to keep customers and add value to the customer relationship, through things like better customer service, and communities.
And my final rant, there was no attempt (oops, my bad, there was a “networking lunch”) little opportunity for attendees to interact. Sessions were back-to-back with typically less than the scheduled 15 minutes before the next session. I would have liked to see a published attendee list, a pre-conference social space, an official conference backchannel and conference tag.
PLUS
I realize it is not like me to rant so much, but I think we have such a great opportunity to show off how this area of the country has so much to offer, and I want our local events to be excellent. And to show that I am not just sitting in the back row lobbing grenades, I would be happy to talk to the folks that put on the event and look at combining Internet Summit 2009 and BlogCarolinas next year, taking the best from both and holding a truly world class event.
