Conferenza Becoming a Blog

Way back when the blogosphere was young, in April 2004, I wrote a piece called: "Will blogging kill Conferenza?"  As I recall it was the first time that two A-listers, Ross Mayfield and David Weinberger ever linked to me, which as I recall, made me ecstatic--except for the fact the posting questioned whether Conferenza Premium Reports, a high-quality newsletter of which I was and am editor in chief could survive a new wave of competition from an odd and unruly lot that called themselves "bloggers." Back then, Conferenza pretty well held the center of my passion even if it didn't pay very many bills That's just one way it resembles blogging for me.

Conferenza covers the top tier technology conferences every year such as PC Forum, Demo, Poptech, D, TED and so on.  Increasingly at these events, I would find myself surrounded by this band of upstarts like Ross, David and Doc, who were showing up, sitting next to me and writing about the very same conferences.  Except these bloggers were publishing even as speakers were winding up their talks. And these new competitors were giving--the content away.

Conversely, Conferenza usually published a week later, and we did a remarkable job in my biased opinion of telling the whole story of the conference in terms of what was said on the dais, what the audience thought of it and what the complications were.  We went through pains to report on candid attendee views.  We even linked to these upstart bloggers and quoted them. The Conferenza newsletters often went over 10,000 words and were designed for executives to read in an hour's time or so, there has always been something very conversational about Conferenza, something very bloglike.

But Conferenza was not a blog.  It's business model was wrong for a blog.  It's length was wrong for a blog and the blogosphere has little or no use for content that is as ancient as a week old. And readers--more and more have been moving away from newsletters and into blogs. My partner Gary Bolles and I have no desire to emulate newspaper editors who are so in love with the paper medium that they are in a death hug with it, not realizing that what they have of real value is the content and the news reporting methodology--not the dead trees, sliced and smeared with dead berries.

It has become time for Conferenza to bring our content to blogging.  We may still write 10,000 words on a conference, but those words will be served up in little spoonfuls. We'll still do post conference analysis, but much of it we hope will come from attendees, not just us.  Blogging has not killed our newsletter--in fact the newsletter will continue until October, so that we can fulfill all paid subscription obligations. But come Feb. 6, we will also be live blogging at Demo.  We will be collaborating with other bloggers at the event rather than seeing them as competition. Our style will change, but we will remain committed to providing the high-end analysis and quality that the Conferenza brand is known for.

We announced these changes to subscribers earlier today and we already got our first A-List blogger. Guess who? David Weinberger. We've been waiting all day for Ross, but so far he has remained mute. Here's our new Conferenza Weblog.  So far, she's not much to look at, but once we get covering conferences, just watch. We also want to provide a great deal more content.  So if you have evidence that you are a quality writer with a strategic mind, please contact me. And if you are a potential advertiser with deep pockets, please contact us in the next three minutes.

An operator will be standing by.

Comments

[Curt]

SI: Pardon my baseness, but how will you make money with this Blogferenza? CH

[shel israel]

Curt:
There's nothing base about the question. Once we get our act together, we expect to make money by advertising and spnsorships.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Why not have both? You can't have the indepth commentary on a blog, as it is instantaneous, but the newsletter could have that. It seems to me that both have value.

[shel israel]

Good question Jeremy. The answer is simply one of time allocation. Neither Gary nor I--nor some of the fine new writers who will be joining us, have time to do both. We all have other fish to fry. The other fish pay rent with greater ease. On a personal note, want to spend the bulk of my writing time on books. Doing that plus contributing to multiple blogs is enough of a challenge.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Okay, makes sense.

But, just to give a different scenario: there are 24 hours a day. How about 2 hours a day to eat, 1 hour to socialize/quality family time, and then 6 hours to sleep. That leaves 15 hours a day, seven days a week. ;)

On a serious note, though, is the blog going to be part of the DEMO blog, or separate?

[shel israel]

seperate.