Ill-conceived conferences in China

There are a couple of interesting posts from the last two days about problems with specialist IT conferences in China. Fons Tuinstra at China Herald pulls no punches in describing "the fact that those conferences are still organized in a very old-fashioned way". He posted after a piece on ChinaTechNews by Danny Levinson about the low profile Search Engine Strategies China event which, for reasons known only to the organisers, was held in Xiamen.

Danny's view is that the venue choice contributed to low impact. He asks "Why didn't they hold it in Beijing or Shanghai where Asia-Pacific and international visitors don't need to take additional flights to Xiamen or domestic visitors don't need to re-route through other cities? Especially for a new type of conference, it's best to hold it in Beijing or Shanghai. If small overseas conferences don't appreciate this, then they should not waste their money coming in here".

That being said, Fons notes that "also the Red Herring Wireless Beijing 2007 event triggered off very few media reports or web references, even though I know them as pretty good organizers and Beijing for sure should be a better location than Xiamen for a smaller conference".

I wonder if the problem is the very low barrier to entry for new conference launches? Companies tend to regard them as "easy" business. A basic database cobbled together from other peoples' directories, enough money to put down a deposit on a hotel room and do some e-marketing and Robert is your mother's brother. Doing this you can pull off a conference, but it tends to leave nobody satisfied. To do one well is a real challenge....but a worthy one if you can make it work.