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Comment by ojbyrne | Hacker News Reader

"At the top of every company, there's at least one person who really cares and really wants the product and the customer experience to be great." In my experience that person is rarely at the top.

And this article seems to be a clear example of this. "Ryan" seems clueless and "Greg" seems to be the go-to guy.

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I got a similiar impression from watching a few Carsonified vids, off course one has to be careful with judging too fast. I wonder why Joel wrote the articel that way? He s basically saying in public: Ryan screwed it up but I could wing it because I memorised my speech.

I hope I didn't create that impression. Carsonified was an equal partner in the event. It was the first time for both of us. We learned a lot. They learned a lot. I made plenty of mistakes, too (at one point I actually forgot my own passport and had to fly across country to pick it up so I could go to Toronto). We're all newbies in this conference business.

Carsonified had never done conferences before?

Not a series of ten conferences in ten cities, running every other day. Most of the cities on the DevDays tour were new to them.

So you basically took a UK company, used to organize large events that span several days a few times a year (and only in UK and a few handpicked US cities), with a lot of preparation time, and let it organize a fast-paced series of events every other day in a number of different US cities they've never been to? Sorry, Joel -- I really respect Ryan and his team (although I can't grieve over Mel Kirk's leaving), but here's your fifth why right there, if you ask me.

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