(Un)conference marketing

There has a lot of mention about Unconferences on my blog and as you might have guessed,I truly love Unconferences. IMHO,BlogCamp was the first unconference that I had attended in September,2006(I know I was too late ) and this is where I understood the power of Blogging.How blogging can made a powerful medium to build a network of like minded people and lots of benefits with respect to marketing through blogs.

Suddenly a personal blog changes its looks and becomes a dedicated blog to Business and Entrepreneurship.May be the interest in Entrepreneurship also came through this event(yes,it is hard to believe but a single memorable incident can change your life).After BlogCamp,there was no looking back,than came the season of BarCamp,WikiMania,Proto and not to forget MoMo(where it becomes very difficult to reach on time ).There was so much effect of Unconferences that I came out with few articles on my blog,solely on Unconferences:

1. Missing unconferences...are you making a mistake?
2. Marketing strategies for startups

Talking about marketing,Unconference has become an excellent platform for Entrepreneurs to showcase their work and get honest feedback from an enthusiastic crowd.There was a demo by Rajiv(who is also the organizer of MoMo,Bangalore along with Rajan) on ThinFone during the last BarCamp and he was quite impressed with the honest feedback given by the crowd.He also got a lot of buyer's from the crowd As it is said,the best way to test a product is to give the product to a set of people , so that they can test drive and give the feedback.ActivMobs are the guys who benefited heavily from Unconferences like MoMo and BarCamp where they had given a demo of their free group SMS service 'InActiv'.Along with the feedback,they also managed to increase the user base of their free group SMS service and this is what InActiv has to say about it's user base.


These are just a few examples that came to my mind and there is no doubt that "Unconference is the best place to showcase your work especially during the germination phase of your idea"

This is the scene as to how unconferences have changed the face of Business and Marketing in India.Now,let us go globally and see what they have to say?CNN reports on "Unconferences as fun conferences" points out the following:

"We figured there was much more expertise in the audience than there possibly could be onstage," says BarCamp co-founder Ryan King.

Unconferences break the barrier between the two. Attendees write topics they're interested in on boards, consolidate the topics, and then break into discussion groups.

This article on BusinessWeek shows how Unconferences are shaking the conventional biz.An interesting excerpt from the article is :

The unconference movement is also a response to the commercialism of many business gatherings. "I don't see why I should pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of being sold to," says David Tamés, a consultant and blogger who spoke recently at PodCamp NYC, a free gathering about podcasting held in early April. At a traditional industry conference, Tamés says, "every single panelist is chosen for economic and political reasons—because they're sponsoring it or they know someone in the organization, and they're all doing sales pitches."

It is quite obvious that Unconferences cannot be a threat to the conferences neither can it replace them but definitely provides an excellent platform for marketing(that too free of cost ).This is just the begging and there is more to come in the era of Unconference.

Note:
There are lot of unconferences in the coming months(in Bangalore and Chennai) , details of which would be listed on my blog very soon!!!

Happy Unconferencing!!!