The new Zeitgeist: meetings = closed, forums = open

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Google has long maintained a "Zeitgeist" page listing popular celebrities, queries, references and even misspellings: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html. Zeitgeist is a German expression that has long since gone global. To explain, Google borrows from Merriam-Webster:

Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era

Well, some heavy weather gathered recently around a Google event called Zeitgeist '05: The Google Partner Forum, scheduled for October. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch first got the wind moving with a post pointing out that Zeitgeist '05 was both exclusive and "off the record": http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050916-124622. Specifically (Danny said the FAQ said), the Forum is for 400 invitees, and that "To ensure that our presenters and attendees can speak openly, no press coverage or blogging is permitted".

Reaction was swift.

Dave Winer wrote, "Exclusive events suck": http://archive.scripting.com/2005/09/17#exclusiveWays .

Matthew Gifford wrote, "I'm thinking that Google is turning into another Microsoft": http://www.matthewgifford.com/2005/09/17/google-zeitgeist-05/ .

Rick Segal said Google was "setting the record for going from darling of the industry to monopolistic evil empire faster then most": http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2005/09/its_my_party_an.html .

I had a milder rebuke, calling it "weird", "a downer" and "bad PR".: http://doc.weblogs.com/2005/09/19#aDowner .

Later I decided to unpack that a bit. That's what I'm doing here.

As I see it, there are two problems here: exclusivity and labeling.

First, exclusivity. After the dust-up, a friend at Google told me that many of us in the blogosphere misunderstand what Zeitgeist '05 is about. Yes, there are speakers, but the affair is a private meeting between Google and its customers (or "partners"). The speakers —Robert Scoble, Malcolm Gladwell, James Fallows and Arthur Sulzberger — are there more in capacities as book authors than as blog fodder (Scoble's superblogger status notwithstanding). In a private setting, my friend said, everybody would be able to speak more freely.

Now, conferences, forums, summits, camps and 'cons may be private in the sense that they charge admission; but what happens there is generally open. You don't give NDAs to people showing up for LinuxWorld, PC Forum, Bloggercon or Foo Camp. On the contrary, these things are generally about sharing ideas and information.

There's a good working phrase for a setting that is exclusive and from which you don't want details leaking out: private meeting. Or just meeting, by itself. Meetings tend to be private and exclusive by nature. They have their own rules, which are made clear before the meeting is called to order. As I said in my "Downer" post,
I can see keeping press briefings "off the record" in embargoed or NDA'd conditions, where product plans are being disclosed. Same with customer meetings, which are private affairs by nature. The conditions in both cases are well understood by everybody, and have been for decades.

But Google calls Zeitgeist 05 a "forum". There's your labeling problem.
Quick, what word most commonly modifies "forum"? Try public. As of today, Google finds 6,150,000 documents with the phrase "public forum". For "partner forum", Google still finds 411,000, but you get my point. "Forum" suggests "public".

A couple years back I helped set up and attend a planning meeting for an O'Reilly event that ended up being called the Digital Democracy Teach-In. The meeting, however, was called a "summit", even though wasn't a "summit" at all. Or even an "event". It was a meeting: a circle of people in a room, planning something they weren't even sure was going to happen. There was no website, no schwag, nothing that anyone associates with a "conference", a "summit", a "forum", or an other kind of Industry Event. It was just a meeting. But it was called a "summit". Big mistake. VIPs who deserved to be at a "summit" on the topic, took their exclusion personally. If the thing had been called what it was, I doubt any trouble would have occurred.

There is a similar and persistent problem with O'Reilly's Foo Camp. Foo stands for Friends Of O'Reilly. Tim O'Reilly and his company have more friends than his camp has room for. So he and the company have made the camp exclusive, to the extent that only a certain number of friends are allowed to attend. Bar Camp was created as a "non-exclusive" alternative to Foo Camp, and now has a life of its own: http://barcamp.org/

Given the growing discomfort and distrust people in the industry feel about exclusive events (and silos of all kinds, frankly), it would be wise to choose labels for private ones carefully. If you're having a closed and private meeting, just call it a meeting. Or find some other word that means "meeting" and won't be confused with "conference".

Next, let's look at the meaning of "private" as a synonym for "secret". Or, "not for sharing". Here organizers need to ask, "What do we need to hide?" And, "Why do we need to hide it?"

In the Zeitgeist case, the only ones with something to hide (to keep "private") are Google and its partners, and then only if truly private matters were being discussed. Future product plans, for example. Or sensitive financial data.

Fallows, Sulzberger, Gladwell and Scoble are all public speakers. That's what they're called. They don't need any encouragement to speak openly. As a public speaker myself, I can't imagine how gagging the audience would encourage me to be more "open". If anything, I'd be discouraged about the whole affair. What speaker feels free to shed more light if none of it escapes the room they shed it in? I'd feel like I was using my fire to light a bowl of water.

Closed environments may make speakers feel more open... but only to a few other people inside a Speech Containment Zone. The net effect isn't more open-ness, but more closed-ness. That may be fine if you're making munitions in the defense industry, but... when you're a search engine? In the Internet business?
So we now have this interesting situation: while the good effects of gagging Zeitgeist attendees are unknown (and likely to remain so), the bad effects are abundant and clear -- right there in Google searches.

That's why I think it's time we called an end to exclusive industry events. If you're having a private meeting inside the company, or with your customers, call it a meeting. Don't fancy it up by calling it a "conference", a "forum", a "convention", a "camp", a "conf", a "con", a "fest" a "thon" or anything else that is typically open to participants in your industry.

And if you do have an industry event, make it open to everybody who's interested. Leave exclusion up to space, schedule and price. Not to anybody's judgement about who's worthy, who's a "friend" or other forms of judgement that are sure to tick off the excluded.

Industries are no longer islands. Nor are companies. The rewards of participation and openness far outweigh the costs of exclusion.