Thanks for the Defrag mention (and please consider this a standing invite to come join us). Bad wifi has long been a pet peeve of mine – and having been in a conference biz for 10yrs, it’s also long been a foe (one soundly defeated now, i might add).

Here’s what really bothers me: providing good wifi only takes one thing – money. That’s it. It’s not rocket science, nor is it technically hard (unless you’re talking about multiple 1000s of people at once). So, remember, the next time you attend a conference with bad wifi (unless it’s some momentary problem that gets corrected quickly), it is that way for basically one reason – not spending the money to have good wifi.

I’ll share my “how to provide good wifi” with any conference organizer that wants to know – it’s quite simple:

1. Don’t EVER trust the hotel to provide. You need to hire a provider with the sole job over the course of your conference of walking around and making sure things work (i have my guy on constant standby).

2. take your anticipated # of attendees and multiply it by AT LEAST 2 (maybe 3) to account for iPhones, etc. That is the number of CONCURRENT connections you will need.

3. Pick which areas of the show will be saturated and which won’t – and don’t be afraid to tell your attendees where the wifi will be best. For example, the keynote space should be DROWNING in enough wifi to cover all attendees, while a breakout room may only need enough connections for 1/3 of the attendee base.

4. Provide hard wired drops to your sponsors. They run a lot of pretty intensive stuff in their booths – hard wire them.

5. And finally – as a basic rule of thumb, spend roughly a MINIMUM of $15,000 (USD) per 300 people attending. If you’re not spending that, you’re not spending enough.

Do those things, and you’ll get happy attendees….and really, nothing matters more than happy attendees. Not even money.

cheers!

Thanks so much for this post and thanks for the mention. I think your post qualifies as the DIA Manifesto of anyone who attends a tech conference. These conferences attract exactly the sort of people who expect to have reliable technology. And, yet, this group has been putting up with sub-standard internet access for far too long. Given the cost of attending these conferences (which is not negligible), let’s hope conference organizers get serious about this issue soon.

- Mary