Finally figured out why I dislike Confabb
I have every reason in the world to like Confabb. Its founded by two friends of mine, its partially funded by a freind of mine and its about a topic which I hold dear to my heart - conferences.
So it is with a critical eye that I judge and use Confabb.
So I feel like i have the right to criticize it:
- I just spent :30 minutes playing with it
- I’m a speaker at two upcoming conferences listed in the service
- and it’s not that I encountered numerous bugs or problems - that’s to be expected.
But its the initial premise that just turns me off. So here’s how the logic goes:
- as far as I can tell - the purpose of the site is for people to come and find conferences - fair enough. Google and Technorati do a shitty job of that.
- as far as me as a spekaer is concerned, I’m supposed to go and register and fill in the standard set of social network info (see IMPORT as a missing feature) and then claim which speeches I’m giving at which conferences.
- I did that.
- and that’s it.
- then I get rated.
- what’s wrong with this picture? Why would I spend all that time just to get rated? Now I can see if some scrub newbie, never been around the block, hired Citizem Agency, hired a PR firm, hired a publicist, spending my VC money, tryuing to get a break, trying like hell to get noticed - would want this service - but not me. Why would I waste my time on this?
- this software falls into the “get up as little up as possible, run ads on it, spend as little money as possible (hell spend NO money on it - that’ll make it GREAT software!), make sure to use Ruby-on-Rails’ software - which I hate.
- Why does software have to be shitty and simple? Why can’t it be well crafted, full featured and proivide value to me?
- it’s typical Web 2.0 and signifies all that is wrong in our industry today.
Here’s my crazy notion - THAT SOFTWARE SHOULD PROVIDE SEVERAL REASONS FOR USING IT - not one.
When Reid Hoffman launched LinkedIn - it had limited functionality, but one KNEW he was up to more. But what guarentees do we have that Confabb will do more? Where’s the roadmap?
- how can I submit a question to a speaker?
- where are their presentations - uplaoded ahead of time, background links, relative material?
- where is the value added of this software? Rating speakers - come on! That’s so dam Web 2.0 -lame!
As I said before - you can do better than that dudes!
November 27th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
It’s a pretty good critique. I think your suggestions are good; they should adopt them. However, I am puzzled by:
“Ruby-on-Rails’ software - which I hate.”
Why? I think any language or framework has it’s time and place. Perhaps sometimes “that time” is passed (i.e. Pascal). What exactly about Ruby-on-Rails do you hate?
Note: The majority of our work is based on PHP and Drupal which we use as a framework rather than a typical CMS, so I have no axe to grind here. I am just curious.
November 28th, 2006 at 12:50 am
There’s a missing piece of software in here somewhere. A packaged conference management suite that includes all the communication software to build community around the conference and let the attendees talk to each other before and after. And to help the attendees talk to the speakers. As far as I can tell, every conference organiser rolls their own website and they all suck. The few that include wikis, IRC channels, blogs and forums tend to be very badly integrated.
I think upcoming.org are the site most likely to cover this.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:18 am
Bumped into a group of Eastern Europeans (I think there were from Latvia) who had an interesting package for people running festivals. You created your own page and then if you wanted to change a booking the software sent the booking changes to the hotel. As a conference go-er I am interested in what Confabb is up to, as a speaker I am not interested in their Technocrati ratings. Technocrati does not read foreign language blogs and I have never found interesting people by checking their ratings.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:37 am
Marc, thanks, as always, for your comments. Sorry you didn’t see our roadmap on the “Coming Soon” tab right off the main nav bar. We thought of having it blink and flash, but then other folks would have gotten annoyed.
Most of the comments we’ve received are of the following ilk:
– “Wow, this is awesome!”
– “Great site by the way, sorely needed”
With an unlimited budget, we could have built in all the features you’re mentioning. Unfortunately, we are human and thus limited. Our users first asked for research capabilities and we’ll be adding the rest as fast as we can. One must get to a “canter” before one gets to a gallop!
Re: your “ask a speaker a question” suggestion - that’s a great one!! It’s an extension of an idea we had around providing pre-conference discussion boards. We’ll definitely add that one to our roadmap… please keep the suggestions coming!!
Cheers,
Salim
November 29th, 2006 at 8:07 am
[…] Salim defends himself and gets into horse backing riding speeds. There are a few good suggestions posted as comments on my post - that hopefully Salim will pay attention to. […]
November 29th, 2006 at 8:24 am
[…] There are a few comments on my earlier post - suggesting features to Salim and team. He’s also put up a ‘Coming soon….’ page. Those are all good things. […]
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:26 am
[…] Marc Canter explains why he doesn’t like Confabb. […]
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
It sounds like you (and Julian, from his post above) might be interested in a project I’m working on: ConferenceMeetup (http://www.conferencemeetup.com)
It helps attendees interact with each other, ask questions of and give feedback to presenters, etc.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:32 am
Mark,
Nice critique. One item I would add (assuming I missed this in your critique): “Where are the RSS and/or Atom Feeds?”. Ditto REST or SOAP APIs? Walled-Gardens and Silos are pretty much dead, right?