Should Conferences Ban Blogging?

Photo by penmachine

Dave Armano is watching an interesting thread started by Greg Verdino. Apparently blogging was banned at this week's Nielsen BuzzMetric client-only conference on consumer generated media.

Greg says: "So how can you host an event about consumer generated media and not let your consumers, um, generate media?"

Now contrast this with Forrester's Consumer Forum. Forrester had a group blog up and running written by attendees.

I see both sides of this issue, but I agree wholeheartedly with Greg. On the one hand if you let bloggers write about a customer conference in detail, there's little need for anyone to pay to attend. However, on the flip side, if you allowing blogging and people take you up on the offer, it's highly likely that you will generate excitement that boosts customer attendance next year. This is especially true if the conference, um, is in part about blogging.

It is definitely far better to allow blogging at an event than to ban it. Look at Gnomedex. Attendance has skyrocketed at this event the last few years. One key reason was that it was heavily blogged.