IABC Cafe Cups Runneth Over

The coverage of the IABC international conference offered by conference
attendees themselves is refreshing for a number of reasons (see The IABC Cafe)..

• You get different perspectives on the conference, so you can recognize
• the comments that seem credible to you.
• Stories about travel conditions, networking, and the mechanics of being at the conference, added a human touch to the coverage.
• There's coverage about an event while it's still happening. This adds to the sense of reading about a real event, rather than a curt summary of what the main speakers had to say.
• The incoming chair of IABC (Regina's Warren Bickford) actually gave a lukewarm review to keynote speakers James Carville and Mary Matalin. How's that for transparency? The representative leader of the organization making an honest comment about the content of the conference. The opposite of corporate bafflegab, and refreshing to hear.
• Full frontal photo of Warren Bickford and David Kistle.

Not every posting was a brilliant gem, but as a whole they did an excellent job of giving you an idea of what you're missing. Which is exactly what a conference report should do, if it was a good conference. (If you click through to the conference coverage, some of the articles will seem to be posted anonymously. That's just a glitch with the software. If you click on the conference category in the right margin and scroll through the postings, you'll see all the author attributions.)

Bickford's decision to pass off conference coverage to his posse of correspondents was brilliant. At a conference with 1,300+ people, the chair of the organization has to do a lot of in the flesh meet and greet, attend meetings,  and so on. He didn't have lots of time for blog postings, and wisely had others available to pick up the slack. A good idea, and something to consider as the year progresses and Bickford finds his schedule gets in the way of regular blog postings.

My rating of the coverage:  Hey, that would be too easy. Go to IABC Cafe and make up your own mind.

Other conference coverage:
Technorati listings
Some photos

IABC Cafe Press Corps (who did a great job):

• Silvia Cambie - Brussels, Belgium
• Adrian Cropley - Melbourne, Australia
• Alix Edmiston - Toronto, Canada
• Jerri Etchason - Seattle, USA
• Russell Grossman - London, United Kingdom
• Tom Keefe - Libertyville, USA
• Barbara Palframan Smith - Sydney, Australia
• Jeremy Pepper - Phoenix, USA
• Gail Pickard, ABC - North Vancouver, Canada
• Debbie Weil - Washington, DC, USA
• Anna Willey, ABC - Regina, Canada
• Julie Woods - Boston, USA
• Charles Pizzo - New Orleans, USA

Comments

[Warren Bickford]

Thanks for the kind words about the "happening" at the IABC Cafe during converence - and even now as the Press Corps continues to post and make wrap-up comments. We had a few technical issues but for the most part I am thrilled with what the corps was able to accomplish.

FYI, when I started the Cafe, I announced that I would have guest bloggers particularly due to my travel schedule. Watch the Cafe in the weeks to come for further announcements about that.

[Jeremy Pepper]

I enjoyed writing there, and still need to write my 'wrap-up' piece (likely this weekend).