I guess I didn’t get back to my thoughts on this cool virtual conference that day but wanted to get it done before I forget!
What did I like:
- No travel to a conference!
- Ability to pop in and out of sessions as I liked
- Easily browse the vendor offerings and chat if you’d like
- Could continue to work while listening
- Their briefcase feature made grabbing vendor and presentation information extremely easy – no having to leave to someone’s website to get materials
- One click entry of contests (where is my Xbox 360 bundle or iPod Touch??) Since you’re logged in I liked the fact they didn’t make you have to re-enter any information or fill out a contact card
- Reminders for presentations that come in your email so you don’t miss a session
- All presentations and materials are available later if you missed a session
What I wasn’t so hot on:
- You could easily tune out because you’re continuing to work – next thing you know you missed 5-10 minutes of what the speaker said or have no context of the slide you’re looking at
- The content was pretty much focused on new Project Managers – both myself and a couple of colleagues that attended didn’t find many sessions all that riveting
- The networking is very difficult to do – you basically know a name and company (sometimes!) of a person and most people didn’t even put a picture on their avatar. I can’t imagine you’d ever really meet someone new on this format unless you want to pester someone with a message.
Those are my top of the head thoughts. Overall I thought it looked fantastic – they did a great job making it look clean and professional. I would definitely attend next year although I hope the topics presented get a little bit more out of the box for more experienced PM’s. Maybe they can offer more than one session at a time to be able to cover more ground in the day and let people choose what interests them.
Project Directions 