Who knows if earlybird deadlines encourage the behavior they're designed to incent? Surely folks on tight budgets will care, while anyone who can afford, say, TED, will only be motivated by the opportunity to get a choice hotel room in time. However, we'll post irregular reminders about key events, because it gives us the chance to look back at certain conferences and make recommendations.
In the case of PC Forum (earlybird deadline ends this Friday, 1/13/05; the event's 3/12-14), there's much to tell. The most venerable of hi-tech events, PCF continues to slightly morph each year, pointing an ear toward the trends that host Esther Dyson feels are top of mind.
Last year's PC Forum offered its typical eclectic mix of speakers and sessions, some of them head-turning, some head-scratching. This year, the theme is "Erosion of Power: Users In Charge." I'm not sure that speakers like the Assistant Secretary for Policy from Homeland Security would agree, especially in an era of NSA-led wiretaps. But certainly folks like the Yahoo's SVP of Search & Marketplace, Jeff Weiner, as well as Google's SVP of Global Sales & Business Development, Omid Kordestani, will concur. It's rare for these companies to have senior executives outside their CEOs and founders speak at such events, so we can hope Esther will be able to pull some interesting insights from them, especially given their pre-eminent visibility at the recent CES. (Though I don't know Jeff, Omid is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.)
Speakers we're especially interested in hearing are the CEO of the AARP (soon to become the most powerful membership organization in America), Phil Rosedale of Linden Lab (with one of the more successful immersive online games), the founder of Facebook.com, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barry Schwartz, author of "The Paradox of Choice." ("Wisdom of Crowds" author Jim Surowiecki would fit perfectly on this dais.) Look also for pet Dyson themes such as digital health information, as well as the usual raft of startups.
But the talk on the dais isn't necessarly the draw of PC Forum. In fact, though we searched high and low, we couldn't find many who lauded last year's event for its content. That's probably not why you should go. Fact is, nobody else in the industry has a rolodex like Esther Dyson, and she proves it each year by bringing together one of the most fascinating groups of participants around. Attendees simply love this event, year after year, because they meet a balanced group of old and new, startup and incumbent, investor and entrepreneur. No other event strikes such a perfect balance.
If you've never attended before, and want to get a flavor of the conference, you can download our full report from last year. (We'll be making select reports from our library available going forward, and if we ever get adventurous, we'll start building a library of them.) For some reason the hyperlinks in this file aren't working; we'll have to ask our buddies at Adobe how to fix that...
gB
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