I just saw on Dave Winers blog that he is canceling his trip to Podcastercon because the conference is allowing a sponsor to pitch a product. What’s up with that? Why could they have not followed the unconference format and stood their ground and said no sales pitches. As a side note I had received about a dozen e-mails over the past week asking me if I was going to be their, I had initially not considered it as it’s a long way to fly for a short conference.
As I have reviewed the blog on their website I realize now why Dave is upset. Well no worries on my part Dave my book has sold really well on it’s own, and I hope the rest of the podcast authors have done well. I did not even consider asking Wiley to do something as I didn’t think it was allowed
What’s even more funny over the past 3 or 4 days I was actually considering going because it was a non-commercial conference. I am a pretty commercial kind of guy, but sometimes it’s just good to leave agendas at the door and have a open and frank conversation without some company pitching me. In retrospect it’s to bad that they were not able to follow the unconference model. If I could get you all out to Hawaii I would put on of these on myself but I don’t think we could get enough people out here to do it. [Dave Winer]
BTW Dave, I really would not have cared if they gave books out, but down deep I think it would have made me say WTF.