For the past few months, there has been a movement in Arizona. Some of you might say that this movement has been happening for a long time, but I’m a firm believer that it’s only now starting to take hold and take off. The creative class in Phoenix is starting to blossom and spread, and that is a wonderful thing. However, we have also very quickly become a group that is not only more social than ever, but a group that has decided that event after event is a necessity in order to help combat our geographic obstacle (read: the Valley is effing HUGE). This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, not only have these events happened in rapid succession, but it was decided that many of these events should happen in a very short time period. This is a problem.
I see it as two fundamental issues.
Firstly, it’s a problem because we are very quickly becoming a group of people who are giving up DOING something in order to attend a conference. It’s not an issue because the events are bad, or the attendees are stupid, or the venues are too unreachable. It’s an issue because we’re becoming a bunch of tech and creative posers. We’re saying that we all want to do wonderful things, and yet many of those things aren’t happening. This is probably a necessary step to take in order to start that kindling and make the movement tip, but since it’s so clear that it is an issue I see no reason why we can’t combat it from the start.
The second issue stems from that point, in that we’re essentially isolating the people that actually are doing something. Asking people who have client meetings, deadlines, and phones to answer to take an entire day out of their schedule for a conference where “All the people who won’t return your phone calls and who you’ve been trying to meet” is possibly the most backwards entrepreneurial concept I’ve heard in a long time. Shouldn’t those people be doing all they can to connect with the contacts they need, and not rely on an event that’s going to cost $100 just to get someone to return an email? If they can’t get back to you, they probably aren’t as important to you as you think.
For this specific issue, I propose a solution. Let’s ask those same people to attend an event from 9PM to 3AM on a Sunday night. Yes, many of the current attendees are doing client work at night like the rest of us, but we all use that as our “crushit” time and would probably be more willing to attend the event were it not in the middle of the week. Also, let’s not group everything together in a 5 day period. Have an event a week, or every two weeks, because we all know that the further we get from our events, the lesser our interactions in life are.
For the record, I did not attend AZEC, PHXWC, or any of the social gatherings that happened in the past week due to commitments to my business and education. I will be at PodCampAZ this weekend.
This isn’t a message to insult anyone or say that somebody or group did something wrong; instead it’s a request that we not try and forget what these events are truly cultivating – creativity, innovation, and what I believe to be the most important aspect of business. Friendship.
Brilliant dude. I particularly agree with "All the people who won’t return your phone calls and who you’ve been trying to meet" is possibly the most backwards entrepreneurial concept I’ve heard in a long time."That is the exact reason I didn’t attend AZEC. The days when VCs and other investors could sit in their ivory castles are over. If they don’t want to play on our field, then don’t. Go somewhere else.Back to back to back to back events are too much for those of us that work for a living to attend. Granted, these events gain a lot of gawkers who are there to look and feel cool, but it’s tough for the people actually doing the work to attend.So, what’s next? November 2010? That’s too long to wait.
"it’s a problem because we are very quickly becoming a group of people who are giving up DOING something in order to attend a conference."Fucking AWESOME statement. I have been saying, only much much more harshly. I think you have done an excellent job of saying it without being offensive."Asking people who have client meetings, deadlines, and phones to answer to take an entire day out of their schedule for a conference where ‘All the people who won’t return your phone calls and who you’ve been trying to meet’ is possibly the most backwards entrepreneurial concept I’ve heard in a long time."This is why more than anything we offer Gangplank HQ as a key piece of Gangplank the idea. It allows people to participate in their own time while giving them resources to take phone calls and even setup meetings while mixing with others. It is another reason we think that getting people serious about doing located in a central area is important. It allows more movement w/o less time away from the actual doing.
I’ve never been more tired or stressed out in the last 9 months than I have been this week. I feel so far behind on my sales duties and other projects because I’ve been out of the office so much. And I haven’t even attended many of the Geek Week events, but those that I did attend on top of my normal out of office networking commitments have been destructive to my energy level. I honestly think that having a huge week long event is a great idea, but it already exists – its called SXSWi. We don’t need to replicate that event later in the year to be successful. Events for the sake of attendance are a waste, events where things are useful and provoke conversation are invaluable.
Yo J.K., I think you did GeekWeekAZ right, and you inadvertently proved it to be a very successful model. Multi-day events aren’t new, and many cities have several geek/business/etc conferences annually. GWAZ does/did a lot of the same things, with one key exception: participants didn’t need to pay $500-$3,000 for the whole thing and feel committed to go every day.As I said, you did GWAZ right: you made time for whatever made the most sense for you, and you ignored the rest. However, you shouldn’t rail against there being events other than the ones you can/want to attend. You should be glad you have enough variety to pick and choose what works best for you. The alternative would look a lot more like the Phoenix tech community 5+ years ago: a monthly meet-up like Refresh Phoenix would pull in around 40-70 people, but they were mostly the same people and there was very little reach outside of that circle.
@BrianI agree with everything you mention. What I want to see is people do stuff after they attend these events – I don’t need to go to a conference every month and hear "You should be like Vaynerchuk and work your ass off 24/7."Also, I wasn’t railing against events I couldn’t/wouldn’t attend. I was railing against when and the context in which events were happening. These events are amazing, they do phenomenal things for everyone involved and all who attend – I just want to see the next step. We’ve gotten past the small reach, small attendance, small response. Let’s spread them out and see what the community can REALLY do when they have some time to act.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I would have loved to have attended each and every one of those events, but unfortunately could only make time for AZEC. If the events would have been spread out throughout the year I would have easily been able to attend all of them. I have a very busy personal and work life, carving out time to attend these events is important to me, but completely impossible to do this much in the span of 1-2 weeks.So in response to Brian, I don’t think that attending one event is doing GeekWeekAZ "right". To denigrate the alternative as being merely a "monthly meetup" is not fair. PodcampAZ has stood on it’s own very well in the past, AZEC was much better attended last year (which could be a function of the economy, not necessarily GeekWeek), PHXWordCamp would have done just fine (probably even better had it not been the day after AZEC). Startup Weekend wasn’t able to happen because there was too much going on. DesertCodeCamp was not nearly as well attended as in the past.It’s very difficult as a business owner, husband, father, and volunteer in many non-geek organizations to make that kind of time, and I’m sure there are a ton of other people in the Valley who are in the same boat. Anyways, I *am* excited to see that the GeekWeek events were successful; that is great for the Phoenix tech community. We’ve come a long, long way in a very short time. Just don’t do them all at the same time next time
I agree with the article, and I agree with Jade in taking it one step further. A geek month would be almost as hard for a busy professional to keep up with as a geek week. I think part of the urge to have these events close together is a fixation on the weather. The idea is that it’s easier to attract out-of-towners when the weather is nice. I’m not sure of this. Geeks tend to be a hardy bunch, and the cost of hotels goes up during the wintertime. Also, I feel like I’m getting more value for my vacation time if I travel when the days are long. I remember at least one of the Desert Code Camps during its glory days at UAT was in the late spring or early summer, and that seemed to work well.I’m bummed that I couldn’t make it for geek week, as I’ve been too busy settling in. If I could have, it would have only been for part of it, but if they took place at different times, I probably would have only gone to one of them anyway.