Matt Russell has raised some interesting questions about HostingCon Connect in a recent blog posting.  I’ll try to answer them and alleviate some of his (and possibly others’) concerns here.

Matt said:

“It looks like this will develop into some third party networking service from what I’ve read. I have to question the value of this though. Networking is effective when done directly. The involvement of a third party (and probably at a cost) diminishes this and is not attractive to me.”

HostingCon Connect does not have any cost associated with it.  It is meant to enhance HostingCon participants ability to network and get things done at HostingCon.  There are certainly aspects of the tools that could be used year-round to make getting in contact with the appropriate people from vendors and other industry players easier.  But the goal of the HostingCon Connect tools is to enhance HostingCon participants’ effectiveness at the show.  Some of the feedback we receive from attendees is that they wish it was easier to get in touch with people who are attending the show so they could get together.  One attendee told me directly that they knew someone they wanted to talk to was at the show but didn’t have an easy way to set up a time to get together.  Those are the types of things we’re trying to help with.  Will we be successful this first year?  Who knows.  But that’s why we’re seeking feedback on the tools - so we can build out a toolset that will help people take advantage of HostingCon.

Matt went on to say:

“I also have privacy issues with people knowing who you are talking to and what about, imagine that being sold to a competitor to give them an advantage over you!”

We have a pretty strict privacy policy, which is linked to all the HostingCon 2007 and HostingCon Connect pages.  We do not, and will not, sell any information about who HostingCon Connect users are networking with to anyone.

Finally, Matt said:

“If it makes networking and arranging meetings with industry peers, I’m all for it. Until we see exactly what it is though, I remain skeptical.”

And that, in a nutshell, is our goal — making networking and arranging meetings with industry peers easier.  Matt (and others out there who may be thinking along the same lines), we don’t want you to be skeptical.  We want you to let us know what we can add to or change in HostingCon Connect to make it work for you.  What would help you more effectively network with others in the industry?  What would help make your HostingCon experience more useful?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 2:25 pm and is filed under HostingCon Connect Blog. 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.