Convention Seminars

It just sturck me after speaking to a couple of people who have been to three or four of the most recent seminars that the speakers on these panels are still 'sharing' the same information that they 'shared' three or four years ago.

Surely the whole point of these panels is to give webmasters 'new' information and not the same stuff they can find for free on any decent message forum?

Does anyone else think that sharing the same recycled information is next to useless? Especially when you consider that many of these panel speakers are supposed to be the leaders in their field?

Regards,

Lee

I agree Lee, the problem is that of the three industries I've worked in (including this one which I'm still relatively new to) it happens in all seminars. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate people providing knowledge and it is great to hear other people's views on the industry - particularly for a newbie such as myself but I think the lack of cooperation within most industries for fear of loss of that "competitive edge" is detrimental to the whole industry. Got a project your working on - great, got something that will revolutionise the industry - share.

If everyone works together then we are sure to acheive more. It goes like the old saying two heads are better than one

The information seems the same because you see the same faces on the panels each time.

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Originally posted by LavenderLounge
The information seems the same because you see the same faces on the panels each time.

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Thats a valid point to although, that in itself should mean that there was new information to be given out surely?

Especially if the speakers had been doing the seminars for several years unless they just talk the talk of course, in which case, why are they on the panels at all? :eek:

Regards,

Lee

Hey Lee,
I have been to my share of events and been on both sides of the panels. The panels are usually an open fourm, and we joke that we get asked the same questions every time.

If the moderators were given a list of tough questions to ask the panel, you would get a whole different event. Not putting any blame on the moderators, as they host several seminars a day and can't possibly be experts in every field to ask the questions, it would help if someone like you, me, or anyone else on this board loaded them with questions before hand.

Pick the seminars that you care about for the upcoming Florida show, and I am sure the pre-selected moderators would love your questions.
I would just feel sorry for some of the panelists who may/may not be ready for the direct questions, but that is the price of being up there. :)

I agree with Craig. I spoke on two panels this weekend, one of which was the gay crossire seminar. In all of the seminars the panelists took 5 minutes or so to say their piece and then the rest of the hour was spent in a Q & A format. The webmasters in the audience had a chance to ask anything they wanted, and in my case, I am more than willing to share my knowledge, but if someone claims they got old information or no information, then they are the ones to blame, not the panelists or the moderators.

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If the moderators were given a list of tough questions to ask the panel, you would get a whole different event. Not putting any blame on the moderators, as they host several seminars a day and can't possibly be experts in every field to ask the questions, it would help if someone like you, me, or anyone else on this board loaded them with questions before hand.

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I agree with you on that although to some extent i also disagree with you lol

I honestly dont think the emphasis should be put on the moderators of such panels to ask the questions in fact, from what i recall i have only attended a couple of seminars where audience participation wasnt high however, of those seminars i attended where the audience was asking questions it did seem like the same old questions were being asked by the same audience members :(

I think it would be a great idea for us to suggest a list of questions that need to be asked on the panels especially the gay panel in Florida if they are having one this year.

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Pick the seminars that you care about for the upcoming Florida show, and I am sure the pre-selected moderators would love your questions.

I would just feel sorry for some of the panelists who may/may not be ready for the direct questions, but that is the price of being up there. :)

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Yep i agree with you whole heartedly on this however, in all honesty that is often harder than it may initially sound especially when you consider for the most part seminar topics and speakers are not published until the week prior to the show :(

In fact i just checked out the Seminars Page on the Internext site and there is no information at all currently displayed :(

Regards,

Lee

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Originally posted by Hammer
but if someone claims they got old information or no information, then they are the ones to blame, not the panelists or the moderators.

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No offence Hammer but thats BS.

The only person to blame for a webmaster being given old or no information is the person answering the question posed.

I dont care whether it is a question on gay traffic, search engines, billing processors or hair colors, the panelists on these seminars should be the ones telling webmasters what is happening NOW in the industry not what was happening last year, or even the year before that or the year before that.

Regards,

Lee

I bet we can call AVN/Internext tomorrow, find out who is the moderator/panelists, and I am also willing to bet we know the moderator personally. :)

We then put together some good/thoughtful/tough questions together, and we have a better seminar. I know I am not on the panel as we didn't do a booth this year, so at the very least I know we can ask the questions ourselves.

Good stuff ill shoot an email across to Tom Hymes with a link to this thread too and hopefully we can get some additional input from him :groovy:

Regards,

Lee

I'd say it is true that we tend to see the same people over and over again on the same panels. In fact, unless there is a new point of view on a panel of interest, I usually skip them.

This topic came up quite a bit at cybernet. The panels at cybernet seemed to be heavily occupied by sponsors, rather than "experts."

In addition, panelists frequently seem to get sidetracked from the topic at hand, which transforms the entire seminar into something it wasn't meant to be.

On the other hand, panelists are faced with a couple of problems. There are usually quite a few newbies in the audience that are looking for the basics. Those types of questions have to be answered every time. Also, many thing just can't be said in an open forum, i.e. trade secrets or anything else you wouldn't want to be quoted as saying in the local paper or on dateline.

I think the industy has been around long enough that maybe it is time for some "advanced" panels or even smaller "think tank" type sessions on certain topics.

Ya know, the ones that i have seen where pretty much the same people, talking about the same thing. I don't think that is all the person's sitting on the pannel that aren't informed or talking about old info. I think that part of it is the fact that a lot of these webmasters, expecially the new ones learn the buzz words first and that's what they talk about when they goto one of these things.

However, things do change and these people are on the pannel to teach and inform people that things change and that just because it worked for them does not mean that it will work for you. (The webmaster.)

So maybe it's both the pannel members and the peoeple asking the question that are to blame for miss information or getting old information. I mean everyone can hang out here all day and kick it with all the pimp's arround here. ;)

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Originally posted by Lee
No offence Hammer but thats BS.

The only person to blame for a webmaster being given old or no information is the person answering the question posed.

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No offense taken and of course I can only speak for myself, but I am always happy to share what I know with others, so let me revise my original answer to be that if anyone attends a seminar where I'm on the panel and feels they didn't get valid information, they didn't ask the right questions or I couldn't get the microphone away from the guy next to me. Actually, that's not very likely so I guess I'd have to say they just didn't ask the right question.

Whoa there... conventions have seminars?! :eek:

I thought it was just parties :wtf:

Seriously, though, I think that what we do see is a fair amount of... nepotism... almost... in the selection of panelists. Same crop of folk over and over who most likely have a close working and personal relationship with whoever it is that selected the panel.

On one hand it's hard to fault anyone for that. If someone's a trusted and close relation, they have enough faith in them and a solid enough reputation that it's a safe bet to put them on the panel as opposed to someone you're not all too familiar with and whose credentials and willingness and ability to share aren't really known.

So it's almost a "pick your poison" scenario.

Further, as some have mentioned, you get a fair number of people who've not attended a great many of these seminars and so really don't know that the question they're asking is one that's been asked a million times before and don't at all know what an answer to it might be. And so it's more than reasonable that they be given the chance to learn.

Ultimately it has to all come down to the moderator, though, who should come with some prestocked questions they don't remember as having been beaten in to the ground in the past and prod original, interesting and informative answers out of the speakers.

It shouldn't be too much to ask of the moderators because as someone affiliated with the organizers of the event that itself touts the seminars as some of their highest selling points, it's up to them to go out of their way to make sure the program will be something worth attending.

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No offense taken and of course I can only speak for myself, but I am always happy to share what I know with others,

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I know you are dude and it is admirable that you are willing to help so many new webmasters :)

However, the problem when it comes to seminars is just that, a lot of time, obviously i cant speak for the seminar you were on as i wasnt there, the panelists talk to the individuals asking questions as if they were still new webmasters which, for the most part, they arent.

Seminars like that are of no value to anyone attending them as only a few of the audience members actually get to 'learn' something new.

Heck even the seminar that Gary was on at Phoenix pretty much had the same people answering the same questions with the same style of 'humor' to actual information. Thinking about it a little more, one of the questions that does stick out in my mind that gets asked at almost every panel is 'which sponsors convert best on gay traffic' and well, as you would expect all the panelists do is promote their own shit lol

There is simply no way that question could be answered, we all have different traffic sources, we all have different marketing techniques and ultimately, just because i can convert on a sponsor, that doesnt mean everyone else will be able to.

Again without offense, i simply wouldnt attend a panel that you were on because i wanted to learn something, i would attend because i wanted to speak to you about something afterwards lol

Would be good to get some more feedback in this thread as to what people actually do look for in a seminar too :)

Regards,

Lee

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Originally posted by RainGurl
I'd say it is true that we tend to see the same people over and over again on the same panels. In fact, unless there is a new point of view on a panel of interest, I usually skip them.

This topic came up quite a bit at cybernet. The panels at cybernet seemed to be heavily occupied by sponsors, rather than "experts."

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I did my best to put several people on panels at Cybernet that have never spoken before, and I would have to say that they did a killer job by and large.

Heh... and you try telling a sponsor that's coughing up a few K for the event that he can't speak on a seminar ;)

I tend to agree w/Lee and Rainey.

Being fairly new to this industry, Cybernet was my second show.
But-I heard the same stuff in these seminars as I did in Phoenix. Nothing new or helpful to me.

However, the "Hot Topics" panel was interesting since it dealt with a lot of relevant, up to date information on how the politcal arena is affecting the adult industry.

Just my thoughts-
lee

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Originally posted by LAJ


Heh... and you try telling a sponsor that's coughing up a few K for the event that he can't speak on a seminar ;)

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agreed, but are the expos meant to be educational or just commercials for sponsors?

i understand the economics. but it's like having newspaper reporters run the ad department and write all the articles on advertisers... some integrity is bound to be lost. If the expo was free... then that's the price of admission. But when people pay to go to seminars, wouldn't you want a panel of experts rather than sponsors?

just my thoughts...

I have to agree with Rainy on this. I'd rather hear from people that know their stuff; than hear from a bunch of people tell you somethings and plug their programs the whole time.

I mean come on now, if their on the pannel then they have $ to advertise and all so we'd 9 times out of 10 know who they are.

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Originally posted by RainGurl
agreed, but are the expos meant to be educational or just commercials for sponsors?

i understand the economics. but it's like having newspaper reporters run the ad department and write all the articles on advertisers... some integrity is bound to be lost. If the expo was free... then that's the price of admission. But when people pay to go to seminars, wouldn't you want a panel of experts rather than sponsors?

just my thoughts...

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Well of course they are meant to be educational but if you tell a sponsor (not all sponsors... just a select few) that they can't speak because they are spamming or telling the same old shit... well, then suddenly they aren't so interested in paying for an event and making it possible for the event to exist as it does. It's a tough balance to strike, and now that I have one convention under my belt, i'm certainly going to try to do better next time. I personally think there were quite a few experts on the panels... with the one hour of legal advice from Attorney Eric Bernstein (an industry first?) being worth the price of admission alone.

But alas... you can't please all the people all the time.

And i see where you are coming from with the newspaper reporter concept, but that's apples and oranges here rainey. Newspapers tend to have several people in several departments. Four people wore a dozen hats each in putting together Cybernet. Rest assured if I had a staff of employees to work with, things would have quite different.

For starters I could have actually enjoyed myself at the show on the first two days during the day LOL.

understood jay. i know it seems that cybernet is being singled out here, but i think the feedback we're giving is for the shows in general. cybernext was just the most recent and well, the topic of this thread.

like i said earlier, overall, i had a great time at the show. i met some new people, did some business and had some fun.

yea, when I mentioned that bout the shows it wasn't any one show. It was the few that I went too.

Kind of why I don't really goto them now. I can see ads for people online all day, and learn a lot from just talking to them 1-1.

Frankly, I think it's the newbies that get something out of attending seminars and since most of them haven't heard the stuff before, it's new to them.

The rest of us that are show veterans go to network, solidify budding relationships, meet friends we only get to see at shows because they don't live near us and promote our businesses. Personally, the only reason I go to most seminars is because there isn't anything better to do at that particular time. ;)

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Originally posted by RainGurl
understood jay. i know it seems that cybernet is being singled out here, but i think the feedback we're giving is for the shows in general. cybernext was just the most recent and well, the topic of this thread.

like i said earlier, overall, i had a great time at the show. i met some new people, did some business and had some fun.

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It's all good Rainey!

Trust me... I'm taking in all this info. Whether I agree or not it's all relevant.

Given that this is my first post, after being spammed by Lee (thanks Lee, I really needed another excuse to avoid my work!!), I thought i better respond to this issue, given it's one i have been involved in trying to change.

Tom Hynes (AVN editor in chief) and I were chatting at the Phoenix forum, saying exactly the same things all of you have been saying here. So he had an idea (something he had been planning for some time), to do a series of educational seminars giving webmasters the "how-to" approach for specific topics pertaining to our industry. I believe the first real forum we will see these seminars available for webmasters will be Internext Florida.

and i'd like to say an offical hi to everyone.;)

LOL Hey Allan hows things mate?

Glad you decided to stop by and make a few posts :thumbsup:

Regards,

Lee

thanks for the welcome. Things are amazing actually. Daniel has just turned 6 months old, and he is growing like a weed. Biz is awesome. Moving into a new studio on september 1st, which is being custom built as we speak.

I am launching Banking Bucks, a new affiliate program, offering a casino, a traditional content portfolio with unique content, and a mobile phone program with a super secret component you won't want to miss.


;)

Awesome stuff glad to hear things are going well for you dude :)

So will we be seeing you at Internext?

Regards,

Lee

yes, we'll be there in full force.