Bitnorth was a fantastic mind-expanding and fun weekend. Oh, by the way…what do we get to blow up or burn next time?

Sorry I didn’t get a response to you on what I thought worked and didn’t, what I would change and wouldn’t. I would not change the location or the disconnectedness of it. I thought it was brilliant that I sat in a room of 40+ people, mostly technologists, and 95% of them were looking up and engaging with the speakers, rather than staring at their laptops and taking in the speakers as a secondary input. Nothing pisses me off more as a conference attendee than sitting in a conference all listening to mad key strokes all around me while I try to give the speakers the respect they deserve. Clearly, getting everyone in sooner so we can get the whole main lodge would be a big benefit. From a content perspective, I liked the mix. I was wondering if a more ridged structure to the short-bits might have worked batter. The 10 slides that changes automatically every 60 seconds sort of thing. I say this as a major offender when it comes to trying to say too much and pushing my 10 minutes to 15. It would force people to think a bit harder about the 3 key points they want to drive home. For people who have a more expansive topic, there are the keynotes interspersed amoung the shortbits. The person then must know ahead of time that they need more time and can request one of those slots. I did like that there was only a single stream, as opposed to breakouts. If the conference doubles in size, perhaps breakouts might work, but with 40-50 people I think it would be a mistake. I can’t really point to anything I thought didn’t work, except the alcohol shortage on the Friday night that was duly rectified for Saturday night. There was never a point where I thought I was wasting my time or disengaged (not been to many conferences where I wasn’t at some point bored senseless, thinking about all the things I’d rather be doing). I think the organic format and eclectic mix of people pretty much ensured an interesting full day of talks. I think trying to make it longer might be a mistake though. Two days of the same format as Saturday would have been too much random information to process and the second day would have likely had me thinking about being somewhere else. As you rightly pointed out, I am now looking forward to next year’s single full day grab bag of what interests a group of smart and diverse people. I also think the fact that it fit into a normal weekend enabled people to come who might not have given up a day’s wages to come for a longer even. And reading more BoFs, I think there were many more than went on the board, you just had to be hanging around the bonfire Saturday night to engage in dozens of really interesting discussions that became more fluid and passionate as the bar-fridge emptied. Just imagine how interesting ans spirited it could have been if we had coxed some of the theologists in the adjoining conference to join us

Thanks again for a great event.

Duncan