What the Cluetrain Manifesto taught me about events

The Cluetrain Manifesto is almost ten years old. I was actually surprised to see it was written in 1999 for two reasons:

- It is amazing to see how it is still relevant to both Internet and businesses. The words of the manifesto sound like a Web 3.0 startup’s mission. They got it right. The people who signed it saw 10 years in advance what was about to happen. Few things are yet to come but I’d bet we’ll shortly experience them.

- Crazy, crazy, crazy. Companies had in front of their eyes the chance to get the most out of the Internet and treat the customer in new, engaging ways. It was there, clearly written and explained. It is SAD to see how only few organizations have embraced these life changing concepts.

The Cluetrain Manifesto is free to read. How the most popular Italian and world’s top 10 blogger, Beppe Grillo, would say, download it, print it and start sharing it around. Give it to your boss, to your colleagues, if possible pass it to the person sitting next to you on the underground.

The Manifesto has a lot of things to say to those involved in events. I went through the 95 Theses and got few that I thought might be of interest.

- Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
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The trade show unfortunate misunderstanding

Last week the blog was fairly inactive as I went to London to attend the 2008 International Confex.

For those out there who don’t know what I am talking about, Confex is one of the biggest trade shows for event planners, mangers and everyone involved into the industry.

This is the trade show of the trade shows. When you host people who actually work with events, expectations are extremely high and I think Confex did great.

It was a great organizational success. If you go through the numbers, you’ll notice that more than 15,000 people attended. Furthermore you would have noticed how the organizational machine worked perfectly. My congratulations to those who managed to create such a perfect event.

Nonetheless, during the whole visit I had this persisting idea: do we need trade shows at all?
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linux.conf.au@eventmanagerblog.com

Few days ago Melbourne hosted the biggest Linux conference of Australia. This event has completely captured for a number of reasons.

- I am a member of the Italian Linux Society
- I’ve erased from my PC every form of proprietary software, choosing Kubuntu
- I’ve participated to a “Linux Day” in Italy and I think they are great events
- I love Australia since I studied there for two years and got life changing experiences
- Linus Torvalds participated to the event and this is a small event itself.

Therefore, for all of the above I decided to contact the guys DownUnder for a chat on the conf. I asked them if they could share with us a bit about the event and inspire us for the future.

I am happy to say that once again I wasn’t disappointed by the community. In the person of Donna I was able to find the usual great spirit of sharing great content and empowering the listener. No matter how busy they were with managing the event.

My thanks to the great kindness of my mates in Australia and for you a great interview with heaps of great info.
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20+ resources for a smooth BarCamp

I recently engaged seriously in running a BarCamp called ecoCamp (the page is in Italian but I’ll be more than happy to answer questions about it). In the process, I noted that there is no page where you can find most of the resources available on how to run a BarCamp. Therefore, I started to collect a few that helped during the processes.

This list is not complete and needs your participation to become thorough. So if you feel you want to add a link just contact me and I’ll put it straight away pointing out the person that sent it. Please use the contact me section also to report bad links and I’ll immediately try to solve the problem. Should you have general comments or want to suggest new sections, please use the comment form below. Do not post extra links in comments as I’d like to make the list complete.

There we go:

Basics

- What is a BarCamp?

Official Wikipedia description of what is a BarCamp
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Why my blog is useless…or is it?

When I started this blog I had clear goals in mind. I wanted to share whatever I learned when organizing events. I thought that it could have been a great resources blog for those seeking for tips, tools, templates and solutions.I had to surrender to communities. While I dove into the blogosphere I discovered new approaches, I started new conversations. Most of all, I discovered Open Space Technology, Barcamps and User Generated Conferences.

The thing is two heads are better than one and there’s no doubt about it. Therefore, I started to include other’s opinion with featured interviews. It felt better…

After that I came to a couple of conclusions:
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