This is something that bothers me about conferences – wifi. Recently Toronto Tech week was a city sponsored conference and there was no wifi.

SwissCom Tries To Deflect Criticism Of Le Web Internet Failure

Le Web, which paid €100,000 to Swisscom to ensure lightning fast Internet, had no Internet connectivity. Nothing for the audience, nothing for the stage, nothing in the press room. Ustream had 50% connectivity, and lost some great footage.

Day 1 was a complete writeoff and I left mid day to work from my hotel. On day two there was some connectivity reported by a few people, but I wasn’t able to get access to the Internet until after the event was over.

I recall liveblogging Forrester conference in 2005 and wifi was spotty. Also I was the only person in there blogging. That was then. This is 2008 (almost 2009).

Conference organisers – listen carefully – you must have wifi. No debate accepted on this.