Wind Energy Conferences: Are They Worth it?

Rosemary just got back from a conference and, like many of us recently, feels discouraged. Attendees and meetings were insightful, but the presentations and panels lacked impact. Allen has often felt the same. The two unpack their issues with recent wind energy conferences and discuss possible solutions to make them more valuable.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my great co host, Rosemary Barnes, who is just back, fresh back from the Australia Wind Energy 2024 Conference in, of all places, Melbourne, Australia. And Rosemary and I were just talking offline about some of the proceedings and the events that happened in Melbourne, and I thought it’d be a good discussion to get out into the greater uptime audience.

Rosemary, first off, welcome back, and can you give us just a couple of just top level what was going on in Melbourne australia at this wind energy conference?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it was actually really focused on offshore wind this time. We I would say two thirds, three quarters, maybe more of the sessions were like explicitly about offshore wind, it seemed, and when it wasn’t explicitly about it, then people were trying to shoehorn it in, which.

On the one hand, it makes sense because that’s the, next big exciting thing coming. But on the other hand, we have literally zero offshore wind currently, and we have many things that could be improved with our current onshore wind rollout. I did think that there, it was a bit unbalanced in that way.

This conference, it was amazing in terms of everybody shows up to it. I, I think I was just back to back meetings the entire time really targeted at all the people that I, Wanted to talk to for, the various projects that I’ve got going on. So in that sense, it was incredibly successful and and had a great time.

But yeah, when I did find the time to step into some of the presentations, which is what you pay for after all, it’s 1, 500 for two days. And yeah, the sessions that I went to, they’re just getting. Worse and worse. It feels less and less like anybody cares what the experience is like for the attendees, what they might be hoping to get out of it.

And it’s just purely about extracting money from everybody, extract money from the exhibitors, extract money from the sponsors, extract money from the keynote speakers. People don’t realize that the keynote speakers are all, they’re all paying to stand up there and speak to you like, like a lot.

Yeah, pretty significant amount. And some of them are good, but you don’t know ahead of time. And for the most part, people pay their 10 grand or whatever it is and stand up there and give you a sales pitch. And that’s not valuable to the majority of the audience. Yeah, another complaint just on the panel discussions.

The panels are just way too big. You have a panel with 10 different people on it you spend half of the session just introducing everybody and then they’ve got to give their little pitch about their company because they’ve got to get something out of it. And then, yeah, there’s not, there’s too many people to have an actual discussion, usually not many, or maybe not any questions from the audience, certainly not addressed in a meaningful way.

And you have sessions like a session on, it sounds like it should be interesting session on supply chain challenges. That’s a huge challenge for for wind everywhere in the world at the moment including Australia. And. You have a, an hour long session and they mentioned the word supply chain, but it’s just Oh yeah, and obviously supply chain is an issue.

And then, move on to talk about something else.

Allen Hall: And let me ask you about that. Let me ask you about that because I’ve been to a number of conferences this year and I don’t want to name the ones I’ve been to specifically, but the attendance in the discussions was quite small, typically, unless it was a technical subject, something that people were having problems with out in the field.

Thanks A couple I remember from this year or last year was like concrete foundations and problems with concrete foundations on turbines, right? That’s a big issue. Another one was lightning damage or qualification of damage to blades and trying to quantify what’s cat one versus cat five.

Trade and industry standard, that was well attended. But some of these that are policy driven or politically driven discussions are just not well attended. Is that the same thing you’re seeing on Australia?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s actually interesting that you should mention foundations because that was the sole good keynote that I saw was a guy from total ground engineering who has a, his He presented some very compelling information about why the current standards for foundations are becoming less and less appropriate as the turbines get bigger and presented some innovative solutions towards that.

So that was a win. That was probably the sole interesting thing that I actually learned from sitting in the audience. Yeah, I and you’re right that they’re not very well attended because probably everyone is thinking the same thing as me, that this is not the point of the conference anymore.

The point is that people that you meet and yeah, early, like a few years ago when I moved back to Australia and I found myself with no network in Australian wind industry. So I went to the conferences and, I needed to Randomly chat to people and bump into people and pull people aside after a presentation to talk to them.

But this time, every single conversation I had gotten in touch with them. Either I already knew them or I had planned out ahead of time and got in touch on LinkedIn. So yeah, I’d say that the last bit of value that’s left at these, the conferences that way that they’re being run is the app that they have where you can actually, search by company, say who’s going to be there from the different companies and then.

You figure out who you want to talk to and send them a message. They also had a semi cool feature where you can send a meeting request. And if you put your availability in the calendar, then it will hook you up and you go into this room. It had a real speed dating vibe about it.

Everyone’s just like awkwardly looking around for who they’re supposed to be meeting. And then, yeah which, yeah, it was funny but that’s actually useful. But yeah, it’s just, it is becoming pretty hard to justify the price and. I don’t know. It’s been years since I went to a European conference.

So maybe they’re following this same same business model as the Australian and American ones now. But the last one I went to in Europe, it was really about the information, that they had people presenting and they would ask people to talk because they thought they had something interesting to say, not because they wanted them to pay a lot of money.

To get up there and talk. Yeah, so I just really think that they’ve got to rein it in a little bit. Get at least keep your panels of a moderate size. I know you’ve got to let every sponsor have a spot on the panel, keep it at a size that where it’s possible to have some sort of interesting communication happening.

Get a moderator that actually knows how to moderate with the audience in mind, okay. Given the session title and the participants, what are the audience going to want out of this? And then, keep people on track. Don’t allow it to become just like a a sales broacher of them, verbal sales broacher for their company talk about the things that people are hoping to learn about otherwise, are people going to keep on going?

Maybe it’s irrelevant, but I would have thought that exhibitors are only paying because. The number of people that come through the door and the same with the sponsors of the conference. They’re not going to want to sponsor. Yeah. Like 10, 000 keynote that has three people in the audience attending.

I could, you know what? They could better spend that money on sponsoring social media content instead and get a much wider view. Yeah. Viewership, listenership.

Allen Hall: Let me ask you why you think this is, because I have a couple of thoughts and I’m going to throw some at the wall here and you tell me what sticks.

First, is that they choose conference venues that are super exclusive slash expensive, like overly done. And so those conference places cost an enormous sum of money to book, to hold, and to then to make some money on as a conference exhibitor or a conference holder. The economics are not in your favor when you do that.

Used to be when we held conferences, I’ve been to a lot of Holiday Inn, Ramada kind of conferences in the United States, a lot less expensive, more attendance just because the entrance fee went down, then the hotel wasn’t as expensive. I think cause you’re, you mentioned the 1, 500 to attend.

There’s a reason why that is, I, was it one of those fancy Melbourne hotels or conference centers?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. It’s in the Melbourne convention center, which they all, they always are that. Yeah. They’re all there. And then. It’s fine. It’s nice, but it’s also expensive. You want to stay close.

So then your accommodation is expensive too.

Allen Hall: See that, that, that doesn’t help the attendees. So if you want people like Rosemary and me to attend, you need to be usually a notch down from that, generally speaking, because 1, 500 is 1, 500. It’s, it is real money. That if we’re a small business, both of us run small businesses, our own business, 1, 500 comes right out of our pocket and it better be worth it.

And what Roseberry is saying, and I think what I’m saying is it’s not worth, some of these conferences are not worth it right now.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And it’s the time cost as well. Everybody’s the same. And actually I did meet up with a few people that are like, Oh my God, did you buy a delegate’s pass?

Why would you do that? It’s obviously you only need the exhibition pass. So that let. Yeah. Okay. I am. I’m starting to come around to that, but I do think that for 1, 500, if you had good sessions it should be allowing you to put your finger on the pulse and figure out, what’s the vibe of wind energy in Australia at the moment.

What are the big problems people are having and then, some potential solutions, some people talking about things that are coming up that you might not have heard about yet. I do think that there’s a lot of value in that, but they’re not trying to get good speakers. And not trying to make it good for attendees.

And I just think surely it can’t continue much longer of this because it’s worse and worse every year.

Allen Hall: So let me ask you about this, the second question I had about attending. Is it because the speakers are less technical? More salesy, more executive office people rather than frontline direct hands on knowledge of what are their expertises, be it blaze, be it nacelles, generators, whatever.

That it then draws less of a crowd because then you do think, yeah, I’m going to see an executive vice president for this large operator. It’s maybe interesting, but I’m not going to take anything really out of this.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and because they’ve all, they’re just giving the same talking points that they give.

Yeah, the higher level, the less interesting, probably, or less. Surprising what they have to say is going to be, I think personally, yes, I prefer, yeah, the European conferences that I used to go to did tend to be a lot more technical and I personally like that, but I’ve also been to some that are more based at a, at a higher level industry in general, because even though, yeah, I’m a really technical person, I still need to know what’s happening in the industry here.

Yeah. And in Australia, there’s not, no one’s designing wind turbines in Australia. We’re buying them and installing them and, I still need to know, Oh, what’s the problem this year? Is it community acceptance of new wind farms? Is it getting enough cranes on site? Is it transmission?

Is it yeah, like lightning damage causing problems on sites or, Anything like that I still want to yeah get my finger on the pulse. That’s a big part of why I would go to a conference like that. And it did, we did get that to a certain extent in this conference but yeah very little.

And yeah, even this same conference a few years ago was better. It still annoyed me at the time, but

Allen Hall: Do you think these exhibits and conferences need a steering committee to help guide them as to what would be important topics to discuss? I feel like we’re missing that right now.

Rosemary Barnes: I think with this particular conference, it’s not it’s an international conference organization group.

They’re not Australian. And I think that it shows that they are Not really, like conferences are nicer. If I think of, for example one conference that used to go to a lot in Europe was Winter Wind and it’s about, yeah, like wind turbines in cold climates. Have you been?

Allen Hall: Yes, I have.

Rosemary Barnes: The organizers were all from, yeah, the Nordics.

They really cared about. Making sure that wind energy was suitable for these cold climates and that the technologies were improving. And, like they started the conference because they wanted to improve knowledge and improve the the state of the industry in that niche.

And so it kind of permeates through the whole thing. They invite speakers who they’ve, cause they’re like involved in the field and they’re paying attention all year round to who’s saying what, and then, they’ll pick out, oh, this person has something really interesting to say, let’s invite them to be a keynote speaker.

And, it’s it’s just a totally different experience. And I can’t even recall the cost of it. It’s not like it was a cheap conference. It wasn’t in a shoddy venue or anything like that. There were, all these in beautiful places. One time I went to one at at Aura.

Actually, you went to one at Åre too, I remember saying. Yeah, it’s like a ski, Swedish ski resort. The conference venue has saunas on the, bottom floor and so it’s not, they’re not cutting corners on, that aspect of the conference junket, but the value that you get, if you want to know, if you’re entering that kind of part of the industry that you need to know about what matters in cold climate wind.

You’re guaranteed to find that out there. And if you go year after year, you are guaranteed to find out, what has the progress been and to meet relevant people and everything. So I just think that it’s much easier to get a good value conference from a, like a small organization that is really dedicated to, The topic of the conference, we need someone within the Australian wind industry to start up a better conference.

Allen Hall: And. Do you think that the attendees are mostly technical people or sales people, or is it a 50, 50 mix there?

Rosemary Barnes: There’s so few technical people in Australia. Like it’s just the industry is not technical here, if that makes sense. Not nearly to the definitely not to the extent of Europe and not even nearly to the extent of the U. S. So you never hear people like that presenting.

Allen Hall: Because that, I think that was the key to Winter Wind the last time I attended. It was focus on this problem. Let’s hear some solutions to this problem. Let’s try to understand the problem a little bit better. Here are some possible ways to address this.

So it was a problem solving session and I think you were right.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And they come in from all different sides as well, cause they’ll have the, like I was there representing LM wind power. And like I didn’t even present every year because you didn’t always have something new to say, but you are basically, doing the company line, giving us the sales brochure and presentation format.

Yeah. Okay. Those sessions were usually a bit boring, but then they would also invite people who were operating wind farms and they’d be like, Oh, we have, brand X turbines and their icing system sucks. Look at all the different ways that it sucks. This is all the ways that it broke. And it, it’s so valuable, that information, because obviously, no one the manufacturer of that system is not going to, broadcast that knowledge.

But that’s how, yeah the industry can improve and what problems there are, then many people can, step in to solve them.

Allen Hall: Isn’t it fun when you see a contrarian point of view at these conferences too, like you see the OEMs and they have a certain sort of cadence to them and they’re pretty similar.

Then you get this one rogue scientist or engineers that comes in and just goes, I’ve worked out in the field, I’ve used these components, they’re terrible, here’s why, and this is what we should be doing about it. Those sort of discussions set the tone for the conference, I think. In terms of how good you feel about when you leave them Oh, something happened.

It may not have been, I may not agree with this person, but at least I now am thinking about this problem in a wider context. And that helps move the industry forward. Did you feel like the industry moved forward after you finished the conferences in Australia?

Rosemary Barnes: No. No, and I don’t recall hearing a rogue voice either.

Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s the, I think that’s the issue, right? Is that we need a Rosemirror on the panel to go, that’s garbage, and here’s why, and this is what we should be doing about it. Gets the discussion going, gets the blood flowing, gets people into seats. That kind of discussion.

Rosemary Barnes: They mention supply chain, they mention transmission, but they’re not really, um, there’s no, I didn’t hear anything new, any new ideas for solving that, any anything that would really, that I feel would like really give people the knowledge and the drive that they need to go out and, make things happen in those spaces.

So I think it’s a wasted opportunity.

Allen Hall: All right. So how do we make these conferences better?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So I think the first thing is that just choosing which ones to go to. Then the organizers of those conferences should be making sure that they are focused on what the attendees are getting out of it.

And that probably means. Picking good keynote speakers based on what they have to say, rather than what their their job title is, how, high up their job title is and also when you’re going to have panels, keep the panel to a meaningful size, make sure everybody is actually going to talk about the topic that people have come to listen to them talk about and get moderators for the panels that actually know how to keep everything focused on, what’s providing value for the audience.

Allen Hall: Yeah I’m with you on that I think keeping the costs down, I’m okay going to a lesser hotel to have a conference, totally fine, because I’m not there to it’s not a vacation for me. It is a learning experience, and it’s a vacation for some, obviously, we’ve been to some conferences in San Diego, and the reason a lot of people go there, especially from Denmark and cold places, is because it’s a nice, warm, sandy beach to be on for a while, so a vacation spot does turn into more attendance.

However, in those conferences that I’ve attended, the sessions, no one’s in them. They’re all out at the beach, so that’s a problem. So again, getting back to What the conference is about, what the talks are about, they need to figure that out and get that I think a committee together that is our industry people that said, these are the hot button topics that will bring people in and focus on those.

And you’re right, Rosemary, the moderators is a big problem. And when you just ask a person that was sitting at a desk at a large OEM or an operator and that’s their, their day job is running this thing. And then you ask them to be in front of this group of people and to hold this panel discussion.

That’s not their expertise. They may not be that good at it. And it just leads to this kind of wishy washy discussion that doesn’t really go anywhere. And I think you and I have been on too many of the, seen too many of those and we’re like, oh, that’s shame. If they had a good moderator here. There’ll be a lot more information coming out of it because the people, the panel people up on the dais there are smart.

They have information in their head. You need to extract it out. You need to give them the opportunity to speak their knowledge and get out of the way. The best moderators are the ones you don’t remember. Those are the best. And sometimes we just don’t have that. It’s hard, right? You and I speak a lot on YouTube and the internet and on podcasts.

It’s hard, right? It’s not an easy thing to do.

Rosemary Barnes: And I feel I would be unfair if I didn’t mention there are quite a few good Australian conferences, but none just focused on, on wind as far as I can recall. Anyway, there’s yeah, the clean energy council does some good events and I am kicking myself about not going, I don’t have the energy to go to another one next week.

So yeah there is that one. There’s a smart energy council also. Does good events. And there was one called all energy, which is pretty good too, but they’re all like more, more broad, can’t get into the technical stuff. And then, the other one, it’s not a conference that’s the event, but the everything electric show that I’ve done a couple of times from the guys from fully charged show.

Yeah. They’re incredibly audience focused and yeah, they take great care in making sure they get good moderators. Yeah, they get a lot of YouTubers to come and present because, they know how to make it fun for the audience. And they’re appealing, they’re not appealing to a professional audience.

They’re appealing to just, people who like, like cars, like home electrification. Yeah, and, the exhibitions, they’re fantastic, but so are the presentations, and I think that’s a pretty good example of how, like, why can’t it be more like that for professionals too we could also enjoy ourselves and learn a lot.

Allen Hall: Rosemary, this has been great. I’m glad you gave us the post exhibition conference data dump. Because I think we all have been thinking this the last couple of years about these conferences we’ve attended and have invented. And so I think we hit you at just the right time.

Rosemary Barnes: Yes, I’m feeling good.

I got through it, but yeah, you definitely did catch me at the right time if you wanted a big rant.

Allen Hall: Thanks Rosemary for being on the podcast. We love having you as one of our co hosts and we’ll see you next week.