RIP, BE Conference

For those who have not heard, BE Conference is, as of this year, changing to become "Be Connected".  You can read more about the changes here.  A short way to summarize it is that instead of holding the yearly BE conference, an online seminar called "Be Connected" will offer solution best practices for several months each year.  There are several advantages noted for this:

• It saves travel costs by eliminating the need to physically travel somewhere. 
• It allows practice seminars tailored more to specific discplines.  For example, in BE Conferences past, I would attend the Civil Keynote.  With the online seminaers, I might have access to not a general civil, but keynotes for transportation, land development, survey & geographic information, and so on. 

It sounds nice, but it's a step in the wrong direction.  I thought the exclusion of hands-on instruction at 2008 BE Conference was a mistake, and now this.  I get travel budgets are tight, moreso now than they have ever been.  And I understand the change is often difficult, if not well received.  But consider:

• No amount of online seminar can replace face-to-face instruction or lecture.  It is simply not the same.  This is particularly true in the case of learning, where the opportunity to dialogue back and forth with experts/instructors is now gone.  The best you might do otherwise is WebEx or something similar, but that is almost certain to be the extreme exception, and not the rule.  Even when you are fortunate enough to have such resources, it won't match the effectiveness of hands-on, live training. 
• There is no longer any networking.  You miss the chance to interact in person with a lot of the people on BE Communities, and those who work in your same field.  I was lucky enough to be part of a great MicroStation roundtable between Ray Bentley, Chris Bober, MaryB, and about a dozen other power users for all sorts of companies and disciplines.  Think that'll happen online? 
• BE Communities is great, and there are a fair amount of folks on BE Communities, but how did those people find out about BE communities in the first place?  Odds are it's one of three ways: 1) they work for Bentley, 2) they went to a BE Conference, or 3) they talked to someone who went to a BE Conference (by the way, I fall into category 2).  Consider anyone who's been to a BE Conference and is also on BE Communities.  What do you think they'd prefer: months and months online at BE Communities, or four days live at the BE Conference? 
• Being able to be told about new Bentley products and innovations live and from the people who create them is great.  Quite honestly, without a physical meeting I think Bentley is missing out on the opportunity to market its latest and greatest offerings to those folks most likely to adopt - or push for such adoption - first. 
• It puts Bentley at a competitive disadvantage.  That other CADD company - I won't name names, but their intials are Autodesk - has its conference right after Thanksgiving, complete with hands-on instructor led courses, peer-to-peer networking, and so on.   That includes just the fun of being together, too.  After all, who besides me thinks it's plain cool to see and hear Voodoo Deville? 
• Lastly, the BE Conference had a 99% approval/success rating from its attendees. The change from BE Conference to BE Connected means switching from an overwhelmingly winning formula.

By the way, does anyone remember New Coke?