Bad Idea: A Keynote at SOA / Cloud Symposium 2010 in Berlin as Skype Call ?!

In October 2010, I was at the IT conference „SOA / Cloud Symposium 2010“. I really liked the conference as I stated in another blog entry (https://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2010/10/06/soa-cloud-symposium-2010-in-berlin/). But one concern really upset me…

What is a good keynote?

I really enjoyed the very good keynote of Christian Klezl (Vice President and Cloud Leader  of IBM Northeast Europe). This keynote contained everything I expect from a keynote: Good slides, good body language, interesting information, and a structured presentation which never becomes boring. Good job!

A Keynote as Skype Call?

The last keynote was ridicolous: It should be presented via a Skype call! No joke…

So I am glad that they had technical problems. They tried for 15 minutes to resolve the problems, but finally this keynote was not presented.

In my opinion, a keynote via Skype is an absolute No-Go 🙁

What is your Opinion?

I think an extra blog entry is worthy, because I really wanna state that I hope this will not happen again – and I do not mean the technical problems, but the idea to present a keynote via skype… (Remember that the visitors paid about 1000 Euros to participate! Not including traveling costs)

And please dont get me wrong: I really like webinars! I often watch them when I wanna see for example a presentation of a product. But that is not appropriate at an IT conference!

So what so you think about keynotes or presentations in general at IT conferences via Skype (i.e. as webinar)?

Best regards,

Kai Wähner