“Dave Winer’s concept of an unconference states, “The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.”"

OK, that’s clear. Then you analyze it and say,

“To me this means that the people who choose to attend are just as competent and just as worthy as the experts and thought leaders who are given incentives to attend.”

Either you completely misunderstand Winer’s quote or you’re just really bad at math. If there are twenty presenters and 100 audience members, each presenter can be *four times more competent* than each audience member and Winer’s definition still holds.

Face it, some people are smarter, more competent, better presenters, and more experienced that average. “Unconference” doesn’t mean “everyone’s the same”, it means “everyone can contribute”. There’s a huge difference.

The value of an unconference is that the number and variety of opinions, perspectives, and experiences allows nearly everyone to find and/or fill a niche. Acknowledged experts or “personalities” in any industry became that way because their niche is very large…perhaps mainstream.

If you think about and plan a conference accordingly, these influencer views do not undermine individual contributions by “unknowns”. On the contrary, they can massively augment — even bring into focus — the narrower, more specialized perspectives of the individuals, increasing their value to the rest of the room.

Don’t let your strong feelings on blogging elitism cloud the reality of what makes a good conference. I mean, isn’t that what’s most important? Giving the attendees that are flying in and staying in NYC the best possible experience?

Incidentally if the “New Media Idealists” or going to get anywhere, this is the kind of rash, rumor-based attack writing they need to avoid.

Either way you have a situation that I happen to have a very strong opinion on.

Dave Winer’s concept of an unconference states, “The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.” To me this means that the people who choose to attend are just as competent and just as worthy as the experts and thought leaders who are given incentives to attend.

Recognizing that value means that both groups should be treated in a similar manner when it comes to all aspects of the event.

I know as well as anyone that things are expensive in a city like New York. So I think that anyone who contributes ought to know how the money is being used to forward the conference goals.

And if there are funds available for deferring travel expenses for contributors then why not have a contest or raffle to return some dough to the people who have chosen to attend and paid their own way?

But when one person gets their travel expenses reimbursed, others might start asking the question as to why that person was chosen to receive that benefit above all others who incurred expenses to attend.

I understand that this is common practice at major conferences. Does everyone have to travel in lockstep with what has been presented as the ’standard’ for conducting these types of events?

That’s not an apology. An apology would have been titled “Scoble is innocentt, I’m an idiot”, or something along those lines. I have no pony in this race, believe me.

Just say something to the effect of “Gosh, calling him “King Scoble” was insulting, I’ll try not to publicly jump to conclusions next time. Sorry Robert!”