The title comes from a great joke and it's a phrase my business partner and I often use when signing off from a really fun blue-sky discussion and need to resume our focus on more quotidian things. This points to my first complaint which is that the TalUnCon felt like it could have easily gone another day without losing steam. Some of the group presentations (especially the Value of Talent track) could have easily gone on much longer than they did.
Second, I think the Future Tech track proved to be insufficiently specified. This is partly a reflection on the track leaders, though Sean tried heroically to steer the group onto the original subject. I also tried, but wasn't sure whether I pushed back too hard. A facilitator's job is to be sort of like a late-night TV talk-show host's: you're there to keep the show moving, but not outshine the guests. The whole point of an unconference is to not have a rigid agenda, and the discussions that did happen meandered in and out of many fascinating subjects thanks to the great group of attendees. I will be posting more later on what i think were some of the most interesting sub-discussions which occurred. Still, it was clear that some of the other tracks were able to stay relatively more focused, leading to more concentrated output. If I were to suggest any changes, it would be to perhaps focus the subject a little more tightly, perhaps by voting amongst the intended track attendees in the weeks prior to the show.
Last, I would have liked to see a lot more of many individuals. The attendees comprised an all-star cast, with an impressive number of company founders and top-notch practitioners, and I really only got to see a relative handful of them. I would love to see a series of maybe 10-20 minute sessions where any attendee can sign up to do a 5-minute presentation on any subject they want, sort of a talent-focused version of the DEMO conference. Or perhaps if we want to get really social and decentralized, we could have people make these presentations on video a month or so before the show, post them all on YouTube, and then have Digg-style voting to determine which ones get promoted to full tracks.
Still, I think it's important to couch all of this in the statement that it was a fantastic event and that I am already looking forward to the next one.
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