Should Conferences Ban Blogging?
Dave Armano is watching an interesting thread started by Greg Verdino. Apparently blogging was banned at this week's Nielsen BuzzMetric client-only conference on consumer generated media. — Greg says: "So how can you host an event about consumer generated media …
Context & Ripple Effects
The irony writes itself: Nielsen BuzzMetric hosted a client-only conference about consumer generated media and reportedly banned blogging from it, a thread Greg Verdino started and Dave Armano amplified. The pickup was fast and broad for a weekend story — Logic+Emotion ran a 'No Blog Zone?' follow-up noting Max Kelehoff's stated rationale, while Publishing 2.0 reframed it as 'Can I Please Blog Your Private Meeting?', showing the argument had moved past one event into the rules of conference coverage itself.
The episode lands mid-arc rather than out of nowhere: BuzzMachine had already argued in January 2006 that the conference business should be exploded into something more open, and Steve Rubel's Blogging Enterprise appearance the year before modeled bloggers as legitimate event participants. A measurement firm whose business is tracking consumer-generated content getting caught policing it at its own event made the contradiction a talking point.
First-order effects
- Nielsen BuzzMetric spends goodwill with exactly the analyst-and-blogger community that covers consumer generated media, forcing a defensive rationale (Kelehoff's) instead of controlling the narrative.
- Attendees like Armano and Verdino convert a private client event into public blog material anyway — the ban generates more coverage than attendance would have.
Second-order effects
- Conference organizers face pressure to state explicit recording and quoting policies upfront, since 'off the record' no longer defaults when every attendee carries a publishing platform.
- Client-only formats lose their shield: charging for exclusivity while courting blogger amplification becomes an untenable mixed message competitors and rival events can exploit.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, closed industry events split into two models — genuinely private briefings with enforced rules, and open events designed for live blogging — with the middle ground disappearing.
- The dispute marks an early skirmish in the broader redefinition of who owns what is said at professional gatherings: hosts, speakers, or the audience-turned-publishers.
The trend: Conferences are being forced to codify their blogging and attribution policies as audiences become publishers, turning event access rules into public-relations decisions.