Conference fatigue stifles ideation?

The slate of must-attend conferences this fall has been intense, from Accelerating Change to Web 2.0 to State of Play to the Second Life Convention to Pop!Tech to the Serious Gaming Summit. At least Pop!Tech will have free live streaming.

Not only is there an abundance of conferences, a lot of the same speakers and the same ideas are at all the conferences. The speakers have trouble keeping pace too, new or even refreshed ideas have been rare.

Certainly there are lots more people doing interesting speaker-worthy things but no one knows about it and they are not getting picked up on the conference grid, or of course maybe they are too busy doing interesting things to speak about doing interesting things.

Conferences are still a great place for synergies and new ideas but the pressure is on organizers to keep them fresh and widen the context and definition of interesting speakers. Also, maybe other formats besides the wrote formula of speaker lecture + Q&A could be explored like simulation, group workshops with meaningful outcomes, online collaborations, etc. BrainJams are a step in the right direction.