ForumCon 2014

Bama has a good point. Limiting it to only the most western point in the US, (excluding Hawaii and Alaska), is a mistake. There's no good reason it couldn't be held on the eastern coast one year, in the UK another year, and somewhere else another year.

 

That sounds like an option, if any. Austin and San Fran are both very, very far from me in Germany. But I would gladly go to London.

Scott

 

I think the San Francisco argument would work a lot better for them if they leveraged that to get more interesting speakers. I don't see anyone from Google on their speakers list, for example. I think it's a huge fail on their part that there's nobody from Google speaking at ForumCon. I just looked at the agenda for this year, even though I will not be attending, and it seems to me that at least half of the speakers are repeats and if there's one single bit of advice they should listen to it is STOP HAVING THE SAME DAMN SPEAKERS EACH YEAR!

 

But can someone from Google really give a talk about online community topics? Everything Google has is countering "normal" forums/ online communities, whether that is their Community sections in Google+, Groups or Google+ itself. If anything Google is also hurting the overall forumsphere.

And from the latest Google employee faux pas, it seems Forumcon is too small to attract any Google staff. LOL!

I'll agree with you on the speaker list. If it has too much duplication from the years before, it is bad for the event, even if the topics they speak about might be different.

Scott

 

I was thinking more in terms of someone from Adsense coming to talk about monetization, how to stay within Google policy, etc.

 

It would be interesting if one of the IB managers came and explained their actions to their customers. We live in hope.

 

or both

 

Ah, ok. Gotcha. Yeah, good idea too actually! Sorry for doubting you.

Thinking about that some more, they could even have someone from the Search side to discuss how to rank better as a forum on Google. Maybe have them answer the question why sites like Stackoverflow get way too much attention in search rankings and push results from forums, which are purely dedicated to that certain topic, to the 2nd or 3rd pages of results. It is a serious issue, because IMHO it is one of the reasons why forums are dropping off the map.

It's funny too. They also have Mr. Stackoverflow, to me one of the killers of discussion on the web (have you ever seen so many opinionated closings of discussions on a forum like it happens on Stackoverflow before?), to talk about the future of online discussion. His vision of future discussion with Discourse, is, well, nothing really new either.

Scott

 

Yep, I'm not really interested in hearing Jeff Atwood pitch Discourse yet again, but they keep asking him back every year to present again and again as if they can't find anyone more relevant.

 

Does anyone have any information 0n whether the managers or a spokesperson from IB will be there and in what capacity.
After all IB is a gold sponsor. Will they actually have a booth or a presence there?

 

If they do have a presence there, and as a sponsor it's hard to believe that they won't, I think they might be in for a rather hard time of it. A number of forum owners have expressed a desire to speak to them this year.

 

If they stick to form a " minor official " will be fed to the wolves along with many " Sorry I do not handle that side of things you will have to talk to someone else"

I would love to be proven wrong and for those concerned customers to actually get some genuine caring responses. Will it happen? Lets see if my opinion is proven to be accurate.

 

From VB FB.

Game ON! Now we just need a senior from IB to be there as well.

 

Plus a few disgruntled forum owners and a camera team

 

Unfortunately I cannot attend but I look forward to hearing about it.

 

Not too long to wait now. So it seems that IB/Vb will have someone there.

If they stick true to form they will do the company hide trick and put some poor guy with no authority there to be the one to be grilled knowing he can only say "sorry not my department you will have to talk to xxxx.

Another possibility that fits the MO of IB is to announce something "new and awesome" to sidetrack the thousands of complaints, VB6??? or similar.

It could be interesting to see how they handle things.

 

Well if they send some one that cant say anything because he has no authority, that can be fun he will be the laughing stock when he speaks. If they do not address the complaints anything they say will carry no weight. If they announce vBulletin 6 or something people need to pay for again that will be suicide.

 

Yup, I am wondering what management person will be there and what he or she will (be able to) say or what announcements they might make. It will be interesting, even if it is.... silence.

Scott