#nxnei: stumbling out of the gate

I’m at the North by Northeast Interactive Conference (NxNE Interactive) at the Hyatt Regency in Toronto on June 15 and 16 2010. I’ll be posting updates as often as possible given that there’s limited WiFi

NxNEi opened with a whimper this morning with attendees discovering that there’s no WiFi — at a conference about interactive media — and a panel of quasi-insiders cracking inside jokes in the aptly-named “Social Media Circle Jerk” session.

So far the conference feels like a bit of an FU to the community that they’ve tried to create.

And there are parallels here to what makes or breaks an online marketing strategy. You can rent your conference facility / create your Twitter account / build a Facebook page, whatever. But if you’re not committed to truly engaging with your audience and meeting them where they are, you’re going to fail.

An update (June 16, 4:57 p.m.):

The conference is over and later workshops delivered more value than the initial circle jerk. Scott Stratten’s passionate talk about the importance of passion in social media success, Scott Belsky of Behance’s workshop on ways to execute better on great ideas (more later) and John Lax on better agency pricing models  were highlights.

The organizers’ promises to get a sponsor to have WiFi next year rang a bit lame (do we really need a sponsor for that? Could we not all just chip in an extra 97 cents to cover that cost?) but they did at least respond to the feedback and props to them for that.