Connecting at Conferences
13 Nov 2006I was a little surprised to read about Confabb this morning. I’ve been working on a similar type of application, ConferenceMeetup, in my spare time.
After going to a few conferences, I really wanted a tool that could help me connect with other people while at the conference, so I built one. The idea behind the app is to provide a private community site for conferences where their attendees can learn about each other, connect with each other, and provide feedback to conference organizers and presenters about the presentations.
It’s been a fun project, partly because Rails makes it so easy to build these types of applications. I think that ConferenceMeetup would be useful to have at any conference. In fact, I appreciate the validation of having some smart people agree with me on the value of having such a service. :)
Update:
After reading Tim’s comment for this blog post, I was reminded that I didn’t mention Web Connections (which I had intended to do — sorry, Tim!), the app that he built that has the same sort of theme. I saw his app after building ConferenceMeetup and I really liked it. I agree with his comment that it really is about the community of people that are participating in the conference. Connecting with the people there makes the event much more enjoyable.
Though Confabb is interesting I think it misses the point a little. To me, it’s the communities that surround and make up the conferences that are important, not “the conference community” (i.e. it’s not about the conferences, it’s about people and the real world)
When we built Web Connections it was more about connecting individuals together. I was hoping tagging + tag commenting would be used to create adhoc groups but it was used more for fun. Next time I think formalising the idea of a “group” may be a better way to go.
and from my experience and feedback from that one app, it was of HUGE value to all conference delegates. People loved it! Social networking is addictive, especially when you mix in alcohol and fellow geeks.
Keep hacking on ConferenceMeetup. Sounds like it could provide great value to a lot of conference delegates *and* presenters.
hrmm seems links get stripped. Web Connections lives at http://connections.webdirections.org