Remote Conferences and the Summit on Content Marketing

Boy it sure feels like conference season, doesn’t it? It seems these days there isn’t a weekend that goes by where I see a colleague posting about some fantastic conference experience. I’m left twiddling my thumbs, my fear-of-missing-out neurosis growing strong; most of the time, since my conference-going resources are limited, I may get to one or two a year. If I’m lucky.

There’s this conference coming up (surprise! I’m writing about a conference again) that will have its inaugural event from May 22 to June 2. It’s called the Content Marketing Summit, and speaking there will be UX Booth’s own columnist, Carrie Hane. She’s amazing and she is running a session.

But I digress. This Content Marketing Summit, it’s trying something pretty interesting—why not skip the whole “physical location” part of the conference experience and instead focus on the content itself? I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise, coming from a bunch of content marketers. But I don’t go to a lot of content marketing events, so what do I know?

Although there’s not always direct overlap with UX and marketing, we wanted to draw attention to this particular event; not only is Carrie going to be there and we support and promote our team, but also because this may be signalling a growing trend. Remote conferences make otherwise extremely expensive events more accessible to newcomers and to those who can’t afford to make these trips.

I’m so, so happy that some conferences are trying full-remote—having no physical presence means a number of excellent things for potential attendees, including a cheaper registration fee and, of course, the lack of travel and lodging requirements. In other words, no need to spend as much money. Not to mention with this format, attendees will have the time and space to see all the sessions they wish to see, rather than make some tough choices throughout the days.

This particular conference may not be for all of our readers, but for the $199 price tag, there are a few hyper-relevant sessions for UX designers. Here are a few that struck a chord for me:

  • How to Write Customer Focussed Content, by UX Booth’s Carrie Hane (because like I said, she’s the best)
  • Promoting Content With Great Copywriting, by Steve Slaunwhite (because great copy equals great UX)
  • Creating Content that Moves, Sings and Smiles, by Lauren Teague (because variety is the spice of life!)
  • How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Company Blog or Content Marketing Hub, by Colleen Jones (because Colleen is awesome, and we should always ask “but do we need a blog?”)

And a ton more for those interested in better understanding the marketing field. I’d be super curious to see what others thought about the remote-only conference experience.

And if you’ve already had any experience — positive or negative — with remote-only conferences, I’d love to hear about it!

Tags: