The Feature

My 12,140 Reasons Why I Won’t COLLABORATE

April 3, 2006 on 6:30 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

I’ve always assumed that vendor events would be a great way to see what is going on in my industry, meet up with my clients and buddies, or simply get away from work. I would not know since, except for a couple of local events, I always seem to be in the middle of some client engagement and I can’t go away to hang out with a cool crowd. I will not be at the Oracle mega conference COLLABORATE 06 in Nashville either. Apart from the reason above, my decision making came down to simple dollars and sense. Taking cues from a famous commercial, you could summarize the five day event as follows:

When you consider similar costs for 5,000 expected conference attendees, plus time and expenses invested by vendors and conference coordinators, that’s a lot of money spent to look at … software. One of the most frequently spoken phrases at the conference will be the “Return on Investment” (ROI). Personally, that return would be very low for me. I feel like these events are designed for users who buy the applications, not necessarily those who use them.

How about you? Are you planning on being in Nashville? What is your experience with user conferences in general? Do they work? Do they meet your expectations and provide you with information you need? Do you have any suggestions to make them better?