The Difference Between Library Conferences and IT Conferences
December 30th, 2004Well, one IT conference at least. The very popular Consumer Electronics Show will be held in Las Vegas in next week and I was shocked to read that they will not be allowing bloggers in. From an article in Infoworld:
“The CEA spent more time qualifying attendees this year to make sure everyone in attendance has a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry, said Kristen Peiffer, a CEA spokeswoman. The show is not open to the general public, and the CEA does not allow the blogging community or other independent observers to attend the show.”
Qualifying attendees? Not open to the general public? Are they that big that they have to sift through the applications and pick out the people that they would like to attend? Library associations and companies should be so lucky! Even though they “qualify” people, I’m still not sure about the not allowing the blogging community in. Does this mean that they won’t register someone who has no other interest in the technologies other than blogging it? They allow the mainstream press to come in, so why not bloggers? If the past 6 months (semi-arbitrary date range) have shown anything, it’s that bloggers and journalists can work together to provide many points of view of one event.
Also, I’m sure that some attendees who are welcomed into the show will be blogging it anyway. These days, a tech show without a blogger present is like a vets office without a sick dog.
The committees of library-related conferences, however, are starting to embrace conference blogging. For example, at the last few ITI conferences, the organizers went out of their way to have us blog the show. They even linked to our blog posts on the conference web site. January also marks the first time that a coordinated effort is put in place by a library association to have attendees blog at a conference. So far, we have more than 15 people signed up to blog for PLA at ALA Midwinter (where the mainstream press will also be in attendance). Walt Crawford is also working on his own to ask for reports from the attendees which will be published in Cites & Insights.
I’m not saying that all technology shows are pushing bloggers away. In fact, most of them do not. Gnomedex comes to mind. But for the “biggest tech show” of the year to go out of their way to exclude bloggers seems, well, un-techie.
Microsoft is going to be showing off their new technologies at CES. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Bill Gates says, “Take a look at our new blogging software…” (link via Pro Blogger)