"I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." -- Groucho
Marx...

What is it that's so appealing about these conferences that limit their attendance to invite only? It's similar to the whole A-Lister argument. In my utopic Web 2.0 world, there wouldn't be exclusive clubs or hierarchies, but we're human and humans still need to measure one another's worth by something, right?

I dunno. I'm guilty as the next person of getting excited to meet the A-Listers and the mucky-mucks. And, to tell you the truth, I REALLY want to go to Google's Zeitgeist. Mostly because the speaker lineup includes some of my favourite authors (Gladwell, Suroweicki), but also because it's so damned hard to get into.

It would feel like back in the day when I knew all of the bouncers at the hottest clubs and didn't ever have to wait in lineups and I could walk right past the people standing for hours in cue and straight into the club like royalty. Gee, I always felt so (temporarily) powerful. To this day, I'm more of a princess than I deserve to be.

When Ojos becomes the next big thing, I'm going to organize a really big shindig that everyone can come to, and, unlike Google's 'gag rules', I'm going to insist that everyone blogs about it.

So there.

[via MicroPersuasion]