Most of it has been done before and many of the topics are pretty much cliche to the industry. As someone I know recently said, "the only people who care about it are the people who put it together and the media." True story. Social is not new anymore. It's not in its infancy. Everything is pretty much another version of Facebook but with a different set of rules around it. Twitter is like Facebook if they shut off everything except the status feature. Instagram is like Facebook if you could only post photos to the newsfeed with different photo effects. Facebook used to be another MySpace at one point.
Tech is so much more than social media and adorable little start ups that enable sharing. Technology is for creating cool useless things we're addicted to (which doesn't have to mean social media) and solving problems. You can be in tech/digital and apply your talents towards less "glamorous" applications such as medical records, integrating the computer and online experience throughout the home and workplace, television/interactive content (okay so this one is a little glitzy), mobile phone banking systems for those in developing nations. There are people who work on improving Microsoft Excel everyday but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm thinking about leaving my job in [insert industry that's falling apart here] because Microsoft Excel really has inspired me to work in technology. It's so cool." Technology is about problem solving, and that is what makes the people who work in it passionate. I think people in the industry would be much more interested in these conferences if there were more topics on new things we could get passionate about, versus the same topics we all pretty much are experts on now. We came to learn and be inspired.
