Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The value of free?

Vowe is posting that the Lotusphere2008 session slides are now freely available for download without having to be a registered user/attendee of the annual event. While some might think that this is cool, I've got a nagging thought in the back of my mind. And I hate those.
Is making the slides available for free going to be the standard moving forward? Is IBM going to charge us the money to attend Lotusphere and then allow others to get the slides for free where as before they were only available to the paid attendee? Looking at it through the budget-minded-managers eyes, why should they want to pay for the cow when they can get the milk for free?
Now I know that attending the conference provides a LOT of value, but the session slides do, for the most part, always contain a lot of valuable information as well.
Am I thinking too much into this? Thoughts?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's just the way I learn... but I look at Rocky's presentation on Xpages (I didn't attend) and I didn't understand a thing.

I would be annoyed if they published videos of the sessions... but the slides are weak when read out of context.

Nate said...

Yeah, thanks Andy... that's going to help things in the future. :(

Charles Robinson said...

For the vast majority of the sessions I've ever attended just looking at the slides is going to give you about a third of the picture. The other two-thirds are the discussion that happens during the session. That's one of the reasons I do a blog writeup of every session, so I have it documented for my own benefit and don't have to go back and dig up my notes.

I think making the slides available will whet the appetite of the people who may not have attended yet, and it makes it far easier for those who did to get the materials. It's not going to hurt in the long run.