[At-Large] Virtual Travel Via the Internet

[Ron Baione]

The internet is supposed to make it easier for businesses and business people to connect and get things done faster, like, for example, recruiting business people, but ironically internet governance connected groups spend most of their time physically traveling to places to get mostly nothing done, and say "more work needs to be done". 

Anybody remember NamesCon 2008? Me niether. There hasn't ever been a Conference that the whole world benefitted from, because conferences in the internet age are not meant for progress, conferences are just excuses for people to travel, to see and be seen, to party, in my opinion, and in my opinion proven by the fact that the internet's supposed and oft-mentioned purpose is to facilitate the entire business process, making the decision making/meeting process at conferences obsolete, unnecessary in a business sense, and also laughable, when some business people who could easily talk and compare business notes any time of day via the internet say, "Let's wait for the conference to decide on that." Why? 

So Travelers can say they are leaders who physically traveled to meet and talk with relevant business people, when I am as much of a leader writing this single critique via email as they are traveling to vegas to walk around and say, "ooh, that's interesting" 1000 times. While it might be fun to do, the internet community is waiting for real tangible progress and real solutions to real world problems and all the tech community has provided them in the past 12 months is an IWatch. I would argue that the "constant conference culture" limits real progress by getting people stuck in a never ending travel loop, where all they begin to care about is the quality of the next travel destination. 

Ron
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