BlogOrlando 07 Final Thoughts
What else is there to say, that a number of you have already said. On the whole I think the day went really well. Not being an 'official' event I didn't really keep track of who 'officially' showed up, and who didn't. We had 290 registered and I estimate that around 225 showed up at Rollins College.
This event could not have happened without the help of a number of friends. I thanked them previously, but I really can't say it enough. Without the group of friends and colleagues I have, we would have had no session leaders. I have said before that all the session planning for this year's event took place in one morning. I sat down at my computer and e-mailed/IM'd a number of friends. In the span of a few hours we had almost the entire session roster planned.
Could things have gone better? Sure. We had issues with room assignments, but we have to remember that we're holding an event on a college campus, so we need to work around the schedule of the institution. The signs and nametags needed to be present/up earlier. We had an initial wifi snafu, but that ironed out quickly.
I definitely need to have a bigger room for the technical track, sorry again about that.
Some folks asked about audio and video of the sessions. Sure I'd love to do it, but I alone just can't pull that together. Perhaps next year we can get a local university (cough, UCF) to donate some students and gear to tape the sessions.
I had thought about expanding the event to two days or at least a day-and-a-half, but I'm glad I didn't. One day is enough, and is all I can handle :-)
As in year's past, sometimes the best sessions are the smallest ones. I talked to a number of people that really enjoyed Alicia's session on separating your digital lives. It's the combination of a small room and group of folks that are really interested in the topic and are willing to share. I had concerns that the event might have been getting too big, that's why I created so many tracks. It was an attempt to get the groups smaller. I think in most cases this worked.
Unlike Chris Pirillo who thought that Twitter was a negative thing at Gnomedex, I thought Twitter worked well at BlogOrlando. Twitter ended up being instrumental in organizing and communicating with folks before, during and after the event. I even used Twitter as part of the giveaways.
This year we switched from dinners to more social events on Thursday and Friday. Yes, you do lose the close-knit feel of a group dinner, but when you have 100+ people coming you can't do a 'small' dinner. Most of the people I talked to had a blast at CityWalk on Thursday and then Slingapour's on Friday. The groups that wanted to go their own way and have dinner together were free to do so.
As with last year, the number of people who said they were coming to the social events and the number that showed up were almost 50%. No complaints here, it just meant more Universal $'s and drinks for those that did come :-)
What's the plan for next year? At this point I really don't know. I'd like to do it again, but this year's event took on a life of its own. I work for myself, so time spent organizing and running the event is lost billable time. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it, but it's draining. I've talked with a few folks at some organizations in Orlando who are willing to help out and that might be the trick...getting somebody else to handle much of the 'event prep' stuff.
During the event it was amazing to see the online discussion and the kudos coming in from friends around the US who all wished they were in Orlando....there is always next year.
What were your thoughts? What worked? What didn't? What would you like to see next year (if we do it again)?
