What the hell IBM? No pictures of sessions allowed?
Okay, all damn week long I’ve been taking pictures at sessions, not as much as in year’s past, but still a quite substantial amount. People like Tom Duff and Bruce Elgort even requested my presence to photograph their session. I’ve seen HUNDREDS of cameras around. So what just happened?
Well, there was a particular reason for me to go back to the session that Paul Mooney and Bill Buchan were giving on Worst Practices, and while taking pictures one of the room monitors came up to me:
Room Monitor: You’re not allowed to take pictures.
Me: What? I’ve taken a pictures all week long, at EVERY Lotusphere
RM: Well I’m sorry, but you can’t take any.
Me: So look at this audience, are you going to go around to every person with a camera and tell them they can’t take pictures?
RM: Yes I would sir…
Okay, at this moment, I could see 7 people with cameras. Two were recording video, and several others were taking pictures. I could have chucked my coffee cup and hit all of these people, but he didn’t say a damn thing to them. Why? Because I was holding a professional camera with a big lens and a large flash.
It was bullshit plain and simple, and quite frankly this is an absolutely STUPID rule, and not applied equally. Anyone from IBM care to comment?
Technorati tags: lotusphere2006
January 26, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
I’m not here to defend the policy, but the room monitor was right — it is the policy. I’ll ask around.
January 26, 2006 @ 9:43 pm
Thanks Ed. I dunno, it just seems like a wierd thing. I don’t remember ever reading that, but I imagine I missed some small print somewhere.
I do think it is applied unfairly to those of us with big SLR kit though.
Any chance that blogging might be considered “press” credentials in the future? Just to avoid the hassel.
And really, in seven Lotusphere’s, this is the first problem, so it really isn’t rampant, but it was annoying since many people have asked me to take pictures of their sessions for them…
Anyway, thanks again…
January 29, 2006 @ 6:06 am
Seems nuts to me. Look at the Flickr love that LS06 has garnered — it’s all good!
January 29, 2006 @ 3:32 pm
I’m with ya. I’ve seen over 40+ pages tagged lotusphere and another 40+ pages tagged lotusphere2006 and a vast majority of them include sessions, people on stage etc.
I do think it’s nice that they’ve never gone after anyone really, but I just didn’t like getting hassled like that.
Oh well, hopefully they will make it more clear next year.
-John
January 29, 2006 @ 7:14 pm
I agree that this is stupid. I could understand if they asked for no FLASH photography while a session is underway. But sheesh, we’re geeks with gadgets! And look at all of the positive publicity coming from folks posting about Lotusphere and OMG!… Lotusphere2006 at the top of Flickr tags! As I entered Jess’ session (quite early) I snapped a couple of pics. This one ( http://urlx.org/flickr.com/e8cb ) shows one of the IBM gents looking around after the first flash. A short time later he came up and asked Jess (who was sitting next to me chatting) to announce that folks should turn off their cell phones and refrain from taking pics. I WAS RIGHT THERE! Hey buddy, you tawkin’ ta me? 🙂
Like so many misunderstandings, some of the odd feelings could be alleviated with very clear communications. I saw signs, quite prominently displayed, in the hallways around the meeting rooms indicating that cell phone use was not allowed in the meetings. It should have been quite easy to have similar signs about photography. And, as you mention, people were taking pictures EVERYWHERE!!