darrylfeldman.com

Mixed thoughts about the expo which I attended and sat on a panel yesterday. Firstly it didn’t seem fresh or new…many of the speakers and content are all ready well known bi-products of the web 2.0 hyperboil and much of it was a direct repeat of the San Francisco event earlier this year which I also attended. Looking at the price of the tickets at around 1000 Euros I felt that the paying audience (I was lucky with a free ticket) were not getting value for money. The facilities were not that well organised, the lunch was damn awful and the staff from the Messe quite rude…telling me off for putting an empty lunch bag on a table. I also feel events like this should be made accessible to people who could really benefit from the content, e.g. students and small businesses rather than marketing and PR professionals and corporate workers. Most people commented on how the content did not really teach anything new rather than reinforce what they already knew. On the positive side I realise that the value of the event for most people is the networking potential, I saw a few startups trying desperately to get an audience with VC types and investors. I hope they were successful. I see that ‘web 2.0′ is becoming tired and having seen the previous bubble implode hope that we don’t end up with a backlash to all the hype and arm-waving. I think it might be time to get real, stop hyping and get on with the business of actually creating great products that users love…whether it’s using the latest technological paradigms is irrelevant and building hype only (self) serves the interest of the professional speakers, corporates and PR people. As they say a good product, service or idea should speak for itself.

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