I am in Berlin for the ESOMAR Congress, to give a presentation on Insight 2.0. This year I have attended about 12 conference and workshops, across three continents, to talk about how Web 2.0 is changing the world. But the conference circuit seems to be largely unaffected so far.
Will conference be replaced by online equivalents, or will they continue as we know them? I suspect that at least for the next few years they will continue as they are. My reasons:
- Research is a very conservative industry, slow to adopt new ideas, so conferences would continue for a few years even if logic was against them.
- The people who make the decisions are largely the people who attend, and the enjoy conferences, A 6 hour meeting in Barcelona followed by an evening on the Ramblas is so much better than several one hour webinars viewed from your office in Birmingham, Lyon, Chicago, Melbourne, or Dusseldorf (all of these cities are fine, but if they are your home town, a change is good).
- One of the great things about conferences are the accidents, the paper you had not planned to see, the person you had not planned to speak to.
- Normal work has a much smaller impact at a conference, compared with an event you take part in from your own office.
I think there will be a growth in cyber meetings, but I do not think they will be at the expense of face-to-face conferences. However, terrorism or a health scare such as SARS could change the picture.