Comments on: Toward accountable conference connectivity

By: John Wilker

John Wilker — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:48:15 +0000

here here!

We’ve had incredibly mixed results with conference wireless, form corporate venues with corporate IT, and no room for anything to dealing with outside vendors, including Swisscom. We had one venue (the one with Swisscom in Milan) try to charge us for upgrading the hotel infrastructure. uh yeah, no!

Every event we organize we forewarn the venue, and it doesn’t always seem to do much good. Some have been able to ramp up, others not so much.

By: HeavyLight

HeavyLight — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:07:44 +0000

I rarely hear enquiries about wifi availability at the events I’m involved with (mostly for the banking and insurance sectors) in the UK — almost all delegates rely on HSDPA, either via usb dongles or directly from their phones.

Wouldn’t it be an idea to specify the anticipated number of simultaneous connections and the total bandwidth required before signing a contract with the provider?
How many connections are the wifi routers expected to handle?
Shouldn’t exhibitors be allocated a completely separate network as part of their stand fees?

I’d be interested in any data to be able to investigate the cost of providing a decent service at conferences.

By: Rick Calvert

Rick Calvert — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:56:09 +0000

If convention internet service providers in France are anything like the ones here in the states Doc, Loic will be very lucky to get 10% of his money back.

There is no such gaurantee that any vendor would give. They don’t have to when they are the exclusive provider. It is one of the things I constantly fight against in the event industry

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:38:43 +0000

Amen on PCForum
The first and foremost, the bleeding edge

Was in a couple of meetings today, and Dan Gilmore and you ( I think you get credit ) “interaction” with Joe Nachio was mentioned.

Also:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98138643

By: What’s a Web Conference Without the Web? | CloudAve

What’s a Web Conference Without the Web? | CloudAve — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:37:33 +0000

[...] my next post I’ll talk about a successful conference that just worked: Defrag.Related posts:Toward accountable conference connectivity Posted Under : General Tags office 2.0 defrag wifi conferences web 20 logistics le web [...]

By: Antonio Volpon

Antonio Volpon — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:07:51 +0000

Wouldn’t it be possible to limit band usage and connections per station so that everyone can at least read email and post on their blog or is it impolite behaviour? I’m sorry for the ones that want to upload 1 Gbyte of videos, but maybe they can do it when they go back home.

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:26:11 +0000

Absolutely. Earlier this week, was at the Coalition for Networked Information www.cni.org) conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington. The connectivity was horrible. Although the team (kudos to CNI staff BTW) had setup up four different wifi routers, the pipe was just too small and the network settings were drastically set to discourage usage. It would time out after 2 minutes. If hotels are going to charge through the nose for this service (and they do), people should expect better results.

If you’re planning a tech meeting, get service level commitments in writing from the venue. If you can’t try somewhere else. Your attendees will only be frustrated and more likely than not, they’ll blame you as the organizer, not the hotel.

By: Kris Tuttle

Kris Tuttle — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:03:11 +0000

There’s no reason for it not to work, I have no problems in MIT buildings when I am there. I sent a message to Loic when he was setting it up that at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin they had problems because they didn’t realize that now attendees at these events carry two or three devices *on average* that expect connections. Some people have 4. Most installers seem to think in terms of what they know which is “a good portion of the audience will have a laptop.”

Of course the truth is that *everyone* in the audience has 2 to 3 networked connected devices plus what’s on the show floor.

What’s frustrating is that this was a “surprise” six months ago but should no longer be one. Of course three or four years ago we didn’t expect to get wi-fi, now we are shocked when it isn’t there.

P.S. – It was surreal to see you in a suit and TIE yesterday. Wow.

By: sy

sy — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:13:04 +0000

The Berkman Center events and communications crew says,
“Amen, brother.”