Last week at South by Southwest, we saw Twitter and Meebo used to really shape the show in real-time. As I wrote, I think this is a good thing, since it combines the elements of the “unconference” (which I find too disorganized) with a traditional trade conference months in the making. Last week at SXSW was, to me, the *perfect* marriage of all of this, and it was extremely well-balanced.

And that’s my fear. The concept was fairly new, certainly not planned to turn out this way, and it was perfect. Next time there’s a congregation of savvy social media-types at a trade show, though, I’m concerned that too many will come into it planning to do something like the Zuckerberg audience-keynote, and completely overdo it. Obviously some ethics will develop over time, and it will balance out.

But we already *have* the balance. So can we all please just keep it in check? I don’t really have any interest in seeing trade conferences ruined just “because we can.”

Wield the power responsibly, folks. We have everything to lose.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 10:56 am and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.