Web 2.0 Berlin Recap - Absolutely Poorly Organized

Many articles were written about the first Web 2 Expo in Europe, and most of them were anything but friendly. Here's an example:

Today I was pretty upset by a question the two moderators of the keynotes raised: they were asking the audience - after apologizing for not everything to be working as perfect as it should have - where the next Web2.0Expo in Europe should take place.

I can give you a hint for the right answer: the Farøer Islands! Nobody likes to live there, it’s full of sheeps and rain. The rain doesn’t make a difference to Berlin at the beginning of November. And the sheeps don’t do either - at least for those, who paid for the conference “Web2.0Expo”, they will feel like sheeps now, I’m pretty sure.

Falk Lueke of “Die Zeit” on his private blog

I have attended many conferences in my life and this was one of the worst organized. Apart from choosing the most uncomfortable venue in Berlin imaginable (an exhibition hall and some conference rooms) with white walls and a grey carpet, long walks in the rain from the parking lots or the train, the attendees were offered lunch bags with a rubber-like sandwich packed in plastic, an apple (fruit) and the cheapest water money can buy in a Tetra bag.

by Frank Hamm, thanks for sharing

Far worse was the orientation system, nobody really knew where to go, so before the sessions the crowd was running around like chickens to find their rooms. There was a room called “lounge” which you can see on the photo below. Neon light, no windows and the only colored spot is Stephanie Booth’s awesome pink macbook. The session rooms looked similar btw.

by Stephanie Booth, thanks for sharing

But that was not all. An experienced conference organizer like CMP MUST know, that there must be enough power plugs for a crowd of about 1000 geeks (estimated), all bringing their Macbooks (yes, it seemed like this were an Apple conference) and that the the Wifi was unstable and permanently overloaded. Such a number of geeks bring down every nework of course - but normally it takes longer. So the most asked questions on this conference were: “Where is my session happening”, “is there a power plug” and “do you have an internet connection”.

All these things made it uncomfortable and unpleasant but I liked the conference anyway because of (some) of the speakers.People like Kathy Sierra, Jeremy Keith, Jesse James Garret, Cory Doctorow or Don Tapscott make it worth going there Some of their sessions were not new to me but I love to listen to them in real. They are simply inspiring.

Jesse James Garret
Cory Doctorow

Kathy Sierra

Jeremy Keith

Further the parties and meetings in the evening I liked a lot (except the official party, which was lame). Many of my friends came to Berlin, we had a pl0gbar, I was invited to the Geek Girl Dinner etc., etc. The people made the conference for me - if I had to go to a hotel room after the official programm in the evening I may have jumped out of a window but like this it became finally a fantastic week in the end and I don’t want to have missed a single second of it.

The organizers should reflect very good on what went wrong. My impression was that the crowd expected it to be more cool, more glamorous - the contrast to the shiny, polished Web 2.0 world we live in was too hard. I will attend the Web 2 Expo in Prague or Amsterdam or whereever it will happen. But please, make it more cosy next time. It is not too hard. I was involved in the organisation of seven BarCamps last year (4 in Germany, 3 in China) and each of them gave me more than the Web 2 Expo. Involve your audience more, ask them what they want, don’t let speakers talk for 3! hours without participation of the attendees. Set up a wiki and communicate with them beforehand. You talk about participation but you don’t live that. O’Reilly is an unrivalled brand, it has been severely damaged by the way this conference was conducted. I am not happy about that.

I hope that the O’Reilly people will be so cool to discuss that.

More to read and watch:

Proud Music: 10 rules - How to attend an O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo conference
Berlinblase: here and here
Jeremy Keith: here and here and here (seems he likes German beer)
On Technorati: here
Presentations on slideshare: here
All photos on Flickr: here (2000+)
Video of Don Tapscott’s brilliant presentation: here

Editor's note: The below content comes from Franz Patzig, a web consultant, blogger and BarCamp Organizer from Cologne Germany.