As a deaf person, I love technology and it helps connect me to many people. But even I can’t believe this true story from Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development, Inc and I disagree with the conference leader’s actions.

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I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit here in Boston. It promised several excellent speakers, offered lots of interesting topics, and the entire thing was blogged, twittered, flickred and videoed from start to finish. So I put on a suit (yes, I own several) and headed on down to the Cambridge Marriott.

That’s when things got interesting. The keynote speaker addressed a packed room of about 300 people. He spoke for 40 minutes or so, after which they opened it up for questions from the audience. Sort of.

Because as it turns out, the only way you were allowed to ask a question was by emailing it or Tweeting it to the front of the room. The conference leader then selected the questions he liked and read them to the speaker.

Huh? I’m sitting ten feet from the stage, but if I want to ask a question, I have to mail it in? If you ask me, this makes about as much sense as telling restaurant customers that the only way to eat in the dining room is to first have your meal delivered to your home and then drive it back to the restaurant.

And so as someone who’s been trying to follow in his wife Linda’s example of making the world a better place, I figured I ought to say something. So immediately after the session, I walked up to the conference leader and politely offered my feedback:

Me: “You know, it struck me as kind of odd that with a roomful of real, live, people, the only way to ask a question of the speaker is to send an email.”

Conference Leader: “You can also Tweet it.”

Me: “Wouldn’t it make sense, particularly at a conference whose central theme is “community,” to let people interact directly with the speaker?”

Conference Leader: “Do you have an iPhone? You could use that.”

Anyway, realizing I was getting nowhere, I thanked him for his time and promised to email him a hearty handshake.

Here’s the point. Technology, for all the wonderful things it brings (particularly to us small business owners), can lull us into missing the bigger picture. The Acres of Diamonds, if you will.

My conference leader friend, for example, was so taken by the Internet’s ability to help people connect instantly across time and space, that when offered the real thing, he chose the simulation.

That’s big. But it’s not just him, we all do it:

…We attend conferences and meetings with our laptops open, listening with one ear and typing emails with the other (not that I think you type with your ear).

…We let the phone go to voicemail every time instead of picking it up when it rings, because it’s more efficient to only return the calls that “really matter.”

…We love our E-Newsletter for the way it lets us stay top of mind with our list of contacts, but when one of those contacts emails with a question, we don’t bother replying.

You get the picture: Technology is great, but it’s no substitute for human interaction. And every time we use it to cut the people out of the equation – whether in the name of efficiency, a desire to appear bigger, or some other “too busy for business” rationalization – we miss out on a golden marketing opportunity.

Because in a world filled with unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls and unreachable corporations, sometimes just looking someone in the eye and listening to what they have to say puts you and your company at the front of the line.

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Does it seem unreal to you? I’d LOVE to have this feature if I should speak at a conference — but not to this extreme. I’m comfortable with public speaking. My fear comes in not hearing the questions asked. So this would make a great work around. Instead of taking this approach, here’s what I’d do:

1. Tell people to send me questions through a Tweet or an IM.
2. Call out the person’s name asking the question.
3. Let the person ask the question out loud while I read the question.
4. Answer the question.

This allows the person to ask the question face-to-face for all to hear while taking the fear of not hearing the question out of the picture. Hmm … makes me wonder if I should speak at sxsw where everyone brings a computer. But what would you like to hear about?

I went to a conference in Austin this past weekend for leaders of an education organization. I lucked out that the first speaker made an important point for all of us to remember.

A teacher goes to a conference and picks up great ideas to take back to her classroom. She gets home and puts all her notes into the filing cabinet. When do you think those notes see light of day? When she retires…

It doesn’t take much to pick up lots of new ideas and learn many new things in an effective conference. But c’mon? Who can remember all of this? Practice it? Put it to use? The president and I discuss the various ideas we picked up and realize we’re thinking too big and it feels like we face a giant to do list.

I can hear all the David Allen fans shouting. Instead, we agree that we need to pick three or four doable things and start with those. The notes won’t go away as we’ll use them to help us with those three or four things while reminding us of others. If we get those first items done, then back to the notes for more ideas and get the next round done.

In one of the sessions, the speaker kept walking past the front rows and I couldn’t lip read through her head. It wasn’t her fault as I never had a chance to give her a heads up. So I watched the presentation, which had just the right amount of notes for me and started working on an article.

I’ve submitted the article to the president. So that’s one idea done. Next idea is to submit an article in the local newspaper’s neighborhood Web site. Already, I’ve sent an email to the person I want to feature and it won’t take much to pull it together once I hear back.

I work as a historian for one of the boards I’m on. Ideally, it’d be lovely to pull together a page for the scrapbook covering the conference today. We haven’t decided on what approach or supplies we’re going to use yet as the committee is still forming.

At least, I’ve got a picture from the event. Just need to grab an accordion folder, print the picture, write a short caption on a sticky note and put it in the accordion folder sorted by month. When we decide, then all we need to do is pull out the photos and captions for the event and that’s one page.

The conference included evaluation forms for every session. I repeatedly wrote, “Please post materials on organization Web site.” We can’t all be in every session that interests us. I also requested a wiki or some forum where we could post our notes. Interestingly, the conference was at Austin Convention Center — the home of SXSW.

You can count on the attendees of SXSW Interactive to share their notes. They probably do the best job of it, making it challenging for all of us to figure out what to read and do. I captured all of my session notes on my laptop (easier to type notes than write notes since I don’t have to look down to type) and I want to share them.

Well, I’ve been home for about five hours and already I have an article, a blog entry, an email, and short to do list. A busy week awaits me, but I hope I will sneak in another thing or two to take what I learned further. What do you do after returning from a great conference full of fun and energy?

sxsw takes place right in my home state of Texas and this year I finally threw away my excuses and took the leap to attend sxsw 2002. I was awed, exhausted, befriended, and amazed.