Who’s Going to Gnomedex?

Next week, I am flying to Seattle to attend Chris Pirillo’s annual blogger’s conference, Gnomedex. I expect to meet up with a bunch of geeks. It will probably be the most dense collection of Iphones in the state of Washington.

This is my second year going to Gnomedex and, quite frankly, I’m using this as my decision maker for if I will attend again. See, I have a lot of respect for Pirillo. It is funny…he is one of those guys you either respect, find intriguing, or hate. There’s not a whole lot of grey. I respect him because he has managed to build up a large following and a huge online presence. And face it, anybody who can pull together an annual conference like Gnomedex every year has to have something going on. And Lockergnome is another large endeavor, even if it has little to do with what started it.

Last year’s Gnomedex was all over the board, however. I didn’t know what to make of it. It was a blogger conference, but there was very little talk about blogging or anything much related to blogging. I found it, in fact, somewhat reflective of Pirillo himself. Pirillo got his start in tech and was known as a tech guy. However, today, his subject matter is all over the place and, branding wise, the name Chris Pirillo is getting to lose it’s identity. And I’m hoping Gnomedex doesn’t begin to reflect that dispersed nature.

If I was to give Pirillo any advice, it would be to try to narrow down your niche a little.

Perhaps the idea is to become known as “that Ustream guy”. And that is working. But, trying to be in all niches at once - I don’t see how that’s going to work very well.

Perhaps I’m misreading his online intentions these days. All in all, I’m still interested enough to give Gnomedex another go this year and see how it rolls out.

A lot of techies will be at Gnomedex and I hope to make a cool networking thing out of it. If you’re going, comment below and let me know. I’d love to meet up with you.

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