As I prepare to head out to the 4th annual New Media Expo in Las Vegas later this week, I find myself preparing for the expo by planning meetups, reading and posting on message boards, following twitter, pathable, and other social conversation networks, and generally reading/hearing/responding to what others are planning. 

All this chatter before the actual event really contributes to the build up of excitement for the event and, more importantly, really starts the conversation before we even get to the event venue. How awesome is that? And when you meet at the conference, you already have a conversation going and so you get a lot more done; plus, it allows you to also plan in advance by virtually “meeting” people online with similar interests, so you can meet when you are on site. And after the meeting is over, conference delegates also get a podcast of ALL the sessions, so they can catch up on what they were not able to attend.

(Of course, the other important bit is to find out where and when all the unlisted parties are going to be, but I digress… )

So, it got me thinking…Why doesn’t the pharma/medical/science industry do the same thing? Why are we simply content to spend a few days at a (sometimes) nice location, look at some posters and attend some talks, then return to wherever we came from. Of course we do a bit of catching up with old friends and conversing in hallways, but these minimal conversations usually start and end at the conference.

At the end, we’ve heard what a few speakers had to say and the posters end up in the bin, just like the silo’s of knowledge that get lost as soon as the event is over, together with the opportunities for potential knowledge sharing and exchange of ideas with peers of similar interests.

I guess I can’t really point the finger at the medical and science conferences, when even most of the pharma conferences that promote “Web 2.0″ topics don’t provide opportunities for such pre- and post- conversations/activities to take place (in contrast, just take a look at the list of apps on the New Media Expo Attendee Tools page). And, unlike most of the tech talks these days, most pharma/medical/science conferences will prohibit recording/distributing the talks and instead, a premium fee is charged to anyone who wants a CD of all the sessions – even for paid attendees. So much for the 2.0 culture.

Having said all that, however, I did notice that the upcoming eCommunications and Online Marketing conference has made an attempt to incorporate some of these activities for their 2008 conference. They have online video interviews/testimonies and even have a social networking site using Ning (for 2007). BRAVO, eyeforpharma folks, but what happened to the link to your Ning-site for 2008?

So, I really hope that this industry starts catching on to some of these trends soon and that we stop following each other in terms of standards for conferences, but instead look outside to see what others are doing — especially the tech industry — and see how much knowledge is being shared and exchanged, leading to innovation, collaboration, and happy, shiny people overall !