• Most of the presentations I saw were quite high-level, whereas I had hoped to hear about innovative case studies.
• The conversation with Evan Williams of Twitter was just odd and didn’t go anywhere. John Battelle asked feature/function level questions of Williams, but why devote so much time to that? Why not have asked about ways people are using Twitter to get their messages out and engage in conversations?
• The panel with Digg, SocialMedia.com, and Cisco was vague. All three speakers would have been terrific by themselves speaking in-depth about one topic, but the format diluted any message from getting through. And like everything I heard, there was very little depth.

At the end of the day, I feel Atlassian has done a better job at so-called conversational marketing by being itself: non-marketing, open, transparent, and, um, conversational. Ironically, not being marketingish has served conversational marketing brilliantly.

At last year’s Office 2.0 Conference, they gave out iPod Nanos to every attendee. What made it cool was that it was unexpected. It was a complete surprise. As people walked into the conference, they received a conference packet that included the iPods. Each iPod had been pre-programmed with the conference schedule, list of speakers, and sponsors’literature. That was a great example of taking a risk, thinking differently, and creating buzz.

What I appreciated about the iPod giveaway, too, was that it was not a gimmick to get people to attend the conference. Instead, the pre-marketing for the event was entirely focused on the content and quality of the topic. I believe over 300 people had attended and they pulled a profit; not bad.

Shouldn’t the focus be on the product and customers first, with marketing being a distant second or third? If you build a great conference, customers will gladly pay to attend and then spread the word afterwards. And they’re more likely to pony up again next year, too.

So I wonder if the strategy at the 2007 Office 2.0 Conference — pre-announcing the iPhone and building all the marketing around it — is backwards? Are they spending too much time marketing iPhones to really focus on the product—the speakers, panels, topics, food, networking, and all the other detail that goes into building a successful event?

I had met Ismael at last year’s event. He’s passionate about the topic and technology, and he’s an exceptionally nice and courteous person. He also refers on his blog to the iPhone giveaway as an “experiment.” I hope to see the published results