Reflections on #psuweb12
Conferences are funny creatures, especially when you haven’t been to many in the past few years. #psuweb12 was a bit of a tour de force, full of strong personalities who came chock full of information primed and ready to share. Every detail seemed to be taken care of by the organizers of the conference down to the food, giveaways, gifts and ample opportunities for folks to meet and great too.
As someone who’s put together a few conferences in my day, it’s outstanding to attend a well-organized event. I commented to friends back home often during the conference about how first-class the entire event was. It’s hard to match the infrastructure of a top-tier university with the energy of conference planners who know their audience and are responsive to it.
Kudos to the “community.” There’s a lot of chatter about how great everyone is, but the collegiality is no mask. People are truly open, excited about sharing what they’re doing and engaging other people to share their ideas too. It was fun to meet and interact with people who are rocking at a high level and the takeaways from the diverse array of presentations left my brain buzzing so much that I probably need that day to decompress after my flight got cancelled on Tuesday night after the conference, leaving me to explore State College alone for a day post-conference.
Woke up in State College after #psuweb12. So this is how Cinderella felt after the ball. Except there were no pumpkins.
— Ron Bronson (@ronbronson) June 13, 2012
The most notable takeway for me was really about putting pad to paper on ideas. I have an awesome network, but it’s so far flung that it can be difficult at times to really get the shot in the arm of energy from other people’s hustle when you need it. It can lead to feeling like an oddball at times.
I spent years engaged in the community through my blogs and other work, but engaged other pursuits over the past few years and have been far less engaged. While I’m not sure what sort of dorktastic things will be forthcoming from me, it was just nice to get that fire in the belly again to want to share with the community.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll have more substantial things to share, because all sorts of ideas came to mind in regards to prospective topics & talks that I could put out there.
After I sleep, perhaps.
