Gnomedex 8.0 Review

Today is my first day back from attending Gnomedex 8.0 in Seattle. I will likely have several follow up posts on this blog as well as over on PCMech regarding some of the things talked about, but today I wanted to post a quick summary of my thoughts on the event itself.

Gnomedex is a different kind of conference. What I like about it is how it focuses on the things we find interesting. It isn’t an instructional conference at all, like so many others. There is value in the instructional stuff, but there is also value in the motivational, the inspiring and the thought-provoking. Gnomedex does well at this.

Last year was my first year attending Gnomedex. I must say that I was left questioning the value of my trip. It isn’t easy for me to go to Gnomedex. After all, I am coming all the way from Florida. After last year’s experience, it took some personal deliberation for me to decide to give it one more try. I was going to use this year’s Gnomedex as my deciding factor. If it was too much like 2007, I would not travel to Seattle for it again. If, however, it rocked, I would come again.

And I’m happy to say that it rocked. Let me hit the summary points:

• The parties were awesome. Good socializing and it was nice to put a face and voice to so many of the online personalities and Twitter usernames I deal with online.
• The food was great - the best food I’ve ever had at a conference.
• The venue rocked. As a Floridian, sure, it’d be nice to have Gnomedex somewhere a bit more central. But, Seattle is a beautiful city. It has a bit of a homeless problem and I witnessed a few drug deals while walking the streets, but I expect such things when I go to a west cost city (as unfortunate as that is).
• Speaker selection was great. Day one was a lot more interesting for me. Day two was much more technical and not all of it was interesting to me.
• Wifi was strong. Nice! Last year, the wifi frickin’ sucked.
• Thank you for leaving out the conspiracy freaks and political stump speeches this year. It stayed techie just as it should have.
• Dave Winer wasn’t there. Big plus. The guy would have spammed the conference with Obama talk the whole time and I, for one, didn’t miss that one iota.

Also, I saw a tweet from Chris saying he almost wished he could turn off the Internet so people would stop twittering. No! Chris, there is a lot of value in the back channel communications at Gnomedex. It improves the experience, in my mind. Honestly, if I wouldn’t be able to get online during the conference, I wouldn’t go.

All in all, it was a success and I’m glad I went. Big thanks to Chris and Ponzi, his parents, and to the rest of the team who helped put it all together.

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