HOTELS

Laurence Geller

NYU and Other Conferences
June 13, 2007

Is it my imagination or are these mega-conferences of ours becoming almost unmanageable? It seems that gone are the days where we could wander around the pre-function areas or the cocktail parties and know you would casually meet the people you wanted to see.

Now meetings are set well in advance—often in suites of the conference hotel or outside the venue. Major cocktail parties seem to be attended only by those who weren’t invited to the endless plethora of vendor-oriented parties (bankers, brokers, franchisers, consultants, accountants, the list goes on), each bigger, flashier and more attention grabbing than their last or that of their competitors.

Gone are the days where the sessions were attended by the self-styled “glitterati” or “cognoscenti.” No, they are too busy in prearranged meetings. Long gone are the days when a session would be the venue for true debate or a major announcement. No, that is for a timed release at the opening of the conference. Gone are the days where a speaker would be invited to a panel or podium because of what he and she could add. That may still be the case, however, a more cynical person than I might wonder if that speaker would still be invited if they were not a paying sponsor.

The NYU conference raises money for a real purpose. Individuals don’t profit on it (other than the hotels’ endless paid suppliers). How many of the other conferences are so altruistic?

Perhaps when it gets down to it, these are not conferences but convenient places for multiple prearranged meetings and entertainment. If so, the same cynic might ask why bother with the sessions at all?

Hardly a week goes by without an endless stream of increasingly glossy or splashy brochures and a river of e-mails advertising yet another must-attend conference in another part of the country or world in another niche or another segment.

My unknown cynic, and it surely couldn’t be me, might well ask, “How many conferences do we need?”

Posted by Laurence Geller on June 13, 2007 | Comments (0)