E-Media Tidbits

Amy Gahran What? Another media conference without wifi in the session room? Not again!

Today I head off to Burlington, VT for the Society of Environmental Journalists conference. I love this event, it's my favorite brain food festival of the year.

I had one major disappointment yesterday, though. In fact, it's become a recurring nightmare for me: Absent wifi in the conference session areas. This is apparently going to be the situation at SEJ2006, much to my dismay.

As I explain in my weblog Contentious, I've seen this problem at least three other times in just this year alone: at BlogHer, SPJ, and Search Engine Strategies Local Search. This is really getting old.

Why is it that most conference venues fail to offer wifi where people will actually want or need it? Or even worse, offer it only at price-gouging rates that bear no relation to the setup and bandwidth costs?

It's silly (or just plain not feasible) to have to run out of a session and up to the lobby or your hotel room just to make a blog post or check a quick fact. What's the ultimate result? Less discussion and coverage. That hurts everyone: conference organizers and sponsors, attendees, venues, and especially the larger distributed communities that cannot attend the conference in person.

Especially at media conferences, this is just unbearable -- and unnecessary. The technology exists and gets deployed by municipalities, businesses, landlords, libraries, coffee shops, and more every day. Most cities (even smaller ones) also have several companies that can set up temporary wifi networks for a daily fee. Ideally wifi access should be incorporated in the conference registration fee, too, so attendees don't get nickeled and dimed throughout the event.

If this bugs you as much a it bugs me, mention it to the organizers of your favorite conferences. And if you have other ideas to get some improvement on this situation, please comment below.