The first Gnomedex was scheduled three days after 9/11. It was postponed for a month. Its creator wasn't sure if he'd even do a third year. But now it's in its fifth year. And the #1 search on Technorati.
The power of community at work. An organizer who understands his community. And sponsors who recognize that power.
Gnomedex has become not only a must-attend, but also a "must-be-seen-at" event within its community, which happen to be bloggers. Partly because of the newness of the topics. Partly because of the speaker roster.
But that's not all. They take care of attendees. All for $399.
You also can't escape noticing that their marketing investment is definitely not on bells and whistles for their website. In this case, it doesn't matter. They know who they are and so does their market.
Here's what's most interesting: They limit the main room at 300 attendees. There's a "Cove" with video/audio feeds that will seat an additional few dozen. So there's an established limit as to how many can attend. There is no financial gain for them to promote beyond this limited group.
But they go out of their way to enable attendees to broadcast everything anyway.
- Updates will be consistently posted to our Conference Blog
- We have set up a Forum for Discussion[with RSS]
- Photos have been tagged at Flickr
- Content is being tracked at Blogroll
- We have an EVDB page for Gnomedex 5.0
- There's an entry for Gnomedex on Upcoming.org
- 2004's partial Attendee List can still be found at Yahoo!
- You can sign up for updates with LiveMessage
- Get involved with the Gnomedex Wiki
Authenticity. Passion. Transparency.
I don't think we'll be seeing the big organizers play here.
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Note to Chris Pirillo: You're welcome. Wish I was there. I'll have to rely on Tim to tell me all about it. I hope others in the TSMR world see what you're doing, how you're doing it and start to realize the potential.
Great commentary. I agree that most conferences will not come close to this for a long time. It's the unconference. And the involvement in and around it is amazing. I've been using the pubsub feed for Gnomedex for a couple of months now - listening to who is planning on coming and some of the news. And now, well, there is just a ton of ways to interact.
So, it's a great use of everything we all use everyday to promote a conference, and make sure everyone has a good time.
Posted by: Arieanna | June 26, 2005 at 04:39 PM