This is my third conference in March, and it’s the third one with serious wi-fi issues. What’s the deal? These are not quilting conferences. These are serious nerdfests, where the organizers are expecting lots of geeks with laptops sucking down bandwidth with abandon. If you don’t have that bandwidth, you will have a bunch of very unhappy nerds on your hands.\
If you’re going to have a technology conference, please invest in good wi-fi, especially if people are paying to attend. Charge a little more, over-provide. Just please, get it right.
Comments
4 responses to “Geek Conference Network Woes”
First law of conferences: The WiFi always sucks.
Actually it didn’t at Mashup Camp. But then we paid for a WiFi upgrade beforehand.
bq. _These are not quilting conferences._
Priceless!
I fear you are mocking quilting conferences. Shame on you!! Little do you know, that at quilting conferences there is ALWAYS enough power to rev up the machines. There is even extra power—and lots of machines. You don’t even have to bring your own machine to a quilting conference. Friendly dealers and teachers bring machines for you to play on. Quilters would never settle for the power necessary—and we have a LOT of sharp objects if the power isn’t there! Now, apologize to the quilters and the organizers of their conferences. If you geeks were really nice, we might come show you how to plan a conference. 🙂
Of course not. I would think, though, that the wireless networking requirements of the two conferences would be different and therefore the nerd conference planners should expect a high volume of network traffic and _plan_ for it. Nothing at all against quilters.