Here’s a tip for all those intrepid conference organizers – in certain situations when there really is no point in scheduling a session. To help identify these here are some key warning signs:

• The session is from 7am to 8am
  • Double points if breakfast is also 7am to 8am.
  • Triple points if the session is in a different hotel to breakfast.
• It’s the last day of the conference
  • Double points if the conference party is the night before
• The session isn’t listed in the handy access program guide
  • Triple points if it also isn’t listed in the full program guide

If the session meets any of these warning signs you probably should just cancel it. If, as was the case with my BoF at Lotusphere, the session meets all the criteria the facilitator probably should just not bother turning up. Security was certainly surprised when I did.

It seems I’ll be heading to Boston in June to speak at the Web Content 2008 conference. The full session details are available, but the brief version is that I’ll be talking about making people important in web content management systems instead of just focussing on content and control. By letting the people who create content actually show through in the system and improve the personal connections, people work together a lot more and are more inclined to actually use the system.