Forum Moderators: open
whats the verdict?
Shak
This is all third hand info though...
Positives:
1. More attendees than last year
2. A couple of good presentations here and there
3. Lots of people looking for hot business on business action
4. The afterparty on the first day had lots of free food and drinks
Negatives:
1. Most of the presentations were advertisements rather than panel discussions or forums
2. The number of exhibitors was small (Yahoo, Google, SEMPO, 10 or so SEO companies)
3. Too many suits
4. Far too many headhunters
5. No decent music at all, anywhere
Like Bill says, I think the real scene, the one that will develop real ideas, is in the PubCon realm. During SES I was approached by a number of people saying let's move more in the casual direction.
[edited by: bill at 12:15 am (utc) on April 29, 2005]
[edit reason] no self promo, thanks [/edit]
This was the first SES I have missed. I went to SES Japan last year and it was very different from any other event. I was not able to go this year but my wife, Motoko went and found the same things that "ators" mentioned in his post.
There were 2,000 per-registered which was much larger than last year and the walk in traffic from the WiFi conference was pretty significant. Admission is free which allows for the blatant self-promotion in the semi-private sessions.
Another observation was the number of westerners attending. Last year I could count them on my hands and this time there were significantly more... not from the US or Europe but from around Japan.
I think next year may be the year that it gets some wings and becomes more of an information event rather than a sales pitch.
I would like to see a PubCon-like event next year!
BTW, I also found a group called JapanBloggers which has regular monthly get-togethers.
The vibe was loose, but safe. There was no danger in the air, no chance of anyone getting blitzed on Bordeaux and then jumping up on one of the tables to dance to Beethoven's 5th Symphony in C Minor, which was actually fricking playing somewhere in the background. Help me. Granted we were at a French chateau [1999group.com] in a swanky part of Tokyo, but I felt like Bill Murray's character Carl the groundskeeper [cbc.ca] in Caddy Shack. Pool, pond, whatever. You know, chinch bugs.
Ask.jp is hoping to do something like this every month. Maybe the next one will be a bit more, well, casual, but then, hmmmm, Japan likes to get its fancy on. It's being organized by their PR company, Vector Standard [vectorinc.co.jp].
Next time I'm wearing butler gear.
There doesn't seem to be a central resource for finding all this kind of stuff.
