MESH CONFERENCE Wednesday–Thursday (May 25-26). Sold out. See meshconference.com for details.
Six years after the Mesh Conference began, Toronto has grown into a boomtown for start-ups and international web businesses.
In many ways, Mesh, a yearly Canadian web conference, helped make the city into the thriving app capital (cAPPital?) it is today.
But another view, one that I’ll elaborate here, takes the opposite perspective.
As the city explodes with innovative new companies, Mesh seems to be on a different trajectory. It may see more attendees, having switched to larger venues this year, but the conference doesn’t match the growth or energy of our vibrant tech scene.
So as an exercise in constructive criticism, here are a few suggestions to help Mesh live up to its name as Canada’s web conference.
Duly (key)noted
Of the four keynote speakers, two are local and two are based in New York. For anyone paying attention, and Mesh attendees most likely are, the local presenters are very familiar faces.
Ron Deibert, a security expert at the Munk Centre’s Citizen Lab, is talking about something called cyberspace and the government’s role in it. He’s been at it for a good while now.
Mark Surman, who’s done an amazing job as chair of the Mozilla Foundation for the past three years, similarly has 20-some years experience in technology.
Elsewhere down the list, I see David Eaves, an open data advocate based in Vancouver, and Michael Geist, a copyright reform hero from Ottawa. Both are both vital to Canada’s technology scene. Together they’ve presented at Mesh five or more times.
I certainly respect the contributions of each of these men, and place great value in what they have to say.
But I also wouldn’t mind hearing from some new, more youthful faces. I’m sure yearly attendees would agree.
Mix-and-Mesh
Toronto’s web scene is diverse, the world’s tech scene even more so. More than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded or co-founded by people born outside the United States. But I don’t really see them represented at Mesh. That’s because there are too many executives, professionals and managers and not enough grassroots.
Subjective on subjects
Glancing down the topics covered by the conference, to be blunt, makes me a bit snoozy. What can be said about Groupon that hasn’t already been said? Likewise for digital activism in Egypt or leveraging LinkedIn.
I’m searching for a topic to get more exercised about, a panel where different opinions can collide. For example, at SXSWi, one of my favourite panels was on HTML5 versus Flash. In the past year, that’s been one of the web’s never-ending, unanswerable questions. Where are those debates at Mesh?
Outside of a few that caught my eye, the presentations feel a bit too safe.
Me$h money
I won’t harp on this too much, but $639 plus HST is steep, especially with few marquee names on the bill.
Picking on panels
“Mesh isn’t your typical pitch-us-a-speaker type of event (sorry, PR folks),” say the organizers. But maybe it should be. All my gripes with the presentations, and perhaps the conference as a whole, come down to curation. A more dynamic process of picking panelists, speakers and keynotes might give us more dynamic presentations, instead of tired subjects and the same names year after year.
A public-facing panel-pitching and voting tool – a process not without its faults, too – might be the way to go.
Another route could be to partner with a more on-the-scene organization. An upstart company like, say, Sprouter, might have a fresher take on who’s doing something new and exciting.
Fundamentally, Mesh needs more entrepreneurs presenting, risk-takers who gamble on new technology and have strong viewpoints on how to make it.
Mesh has been a success thus far, but it hasn’t exactly been inspiring. Here’s hoping for more of both in the future.
joshuae@nowtoronto.com
