Why do conferences suck?

Michael Baker
July 31, 2013
The Age

Sleeping badly? Think about attending a nearby conference, it will be sure to knock you out.

Hardly had I taken my seat on the express from Washington, D.C. to New York last week when a businesswoman rocked up and sat down next to me. She wore full blue pinstripe battledress and talked loudly into a mobile phone.

I gathered the person on the other end of the phone was a friend who was terrified because she’d been buttonholed into presenting at a conference, something she had evidently never done before. My pinstriped travelling companion at first tried to coach and reassure, but then after a few minutes she became exasperated: “Look, honey,” she purred, “most conference presentations are completely [expletive] boring. How can yours possibly be any [expletive] worse?!”
Most conference presentations are completely [expletive] boring. How can yours possibly be any [expletive] worse?!

Few who have been around the conference circuit for long would disagree. Why are conferences so often bad? In the industry in which I work – retail – there are just too many conferences going on around the world and not enough good speakers to stock them.

How can you detect that a conference is likely to be a dud before you sign up and part with your registration fee? And if you are signed up, how can you sniff out sessions that are likely to be a waste of time?

There are a variety of approaches but one that I use is to identify speakers on the program who fit into one of the following five categories.

The futurist. The futurist is someone who reads a lot, uncovers trends and then extrapolates them out to some distant time horizon when you will no longer remember that the futurist made the prediction and the futurist no longer cares, possibly because you’re both dead. Futurists are often professional speechmakers, making themselves available for a fat honorarium to any conference organiser who will pay. They are the grand larcenists of business conferences, taking a cut from every registrant’s fee without returning any industry-specific knowledge. Sometimes they can have entertainment value.

The mainstream CEO. The mainstream CEO at retail industry conferences is often the executive who heads up a major retail chain. In 2013 Australia, he or she falls generally into three subcategories – the CEO who genuinely doesn’t know what’s going on in the industry, the one who is in denial about what’s going on, or the one who knows what’s going on but can’t admit to it because it would reflect poorly on him or herself and cause the company’s shares to tank. The better CEOs don’t have time to speak at conferences – they are too busy running their companies.

The business economist. These are what noted American economist Paul Krugman refers to as the “up-and-down” economists. They appear regularly on news programs and are the go-to guys for a quick comment whenever some important economic indicator is released. At a conference, these guys are like the picadors at a bullfight, the ones who jab the bull with lances to weaken it. You are the bull in this case, and instead of lances business economists use a series of irritating and uninsightful charts showing trends in consumer confidence, house prices, bond yields and other data. You will struggle to remember or care about any of this by the end of the day.

The deal maker. In the retail industry, this is the speaker representing the brokerage firm. If he or she works for the property side the only incentive is to paint a rosy picture to help drive a better deal for landlord clients. A series of powerpoint charts will show things are either perfect, have been bad but are on their way back to being perfect, or, in the worse case, are not nearly as bad as they really seem to be.

On the other hand, if he or she works for the retail tenant side, the incentive is to paint a miserable picture of the market to help drive a better deal for the retailer. Powerpoint charts will show the opposite of the ones shown by the property broker.

The consultant. That’s people like me. We are often knowledgable and well-intentioned but there are two problems with inviting us to speak at conferences. First, our clients are often members of the audience and so we may not be able to say anything that might look bad for them. Second, the only compelling business reason for a consultant to accept a conference gig is to market to clients. Who wants to pay a registration fee to sit and listen to a thinly-veiled marketing pitch?

Those are the speakers to consider avoiding. Who are the ones to look for? Retired CEOs and retired politicians are often good value because they have deep insider knowledge but are usually no longer motivated to conceal the truth.

Academics can be good because they usually do genuine research to support their arguments. The downside is that they can be dull and pedantic.

Successful small entrepreneurs are often priceless. So are some kinds of nerds, for example the ‘growth hackers’ who tackle big data issues and possibly control the future of marketing.

Then there is you. If you are invited to speak at a conference for the first time and think you might not come up to the mark, quit worrying. Remember the words of my co-passenger in pinstripes: “Most conference presentations are completely [expletive] boring. How can yours possibly be any [expletive] worse?!”

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