I can’t believe a little over a week has passed since I was at the digitalNow conference in Orlando. Part of me feels like I just left, part of me feels like it was forever ago. I guess all good things have to come to an end. The true mark of a great conference experience can be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

At the end of each conference that I attend I ask myself the following questions: How were the individual sessions? How were the keynote speakers? How was the space and time managed? What was the quality of the interactions? Did I leave the conference knowing just a bit more about topics that I am extremely passionate about as well as topics I had never contemplated?

Similarly I also find myself evaluating the qualitative aspects of the conference as well. How many of the sessions were thought provoking or really worth attending? How many of the key note speakers would I want to see again? How many new people did I meet? Of those people that I met how many do I plan on staying in contact with? How many old friends was I able to catch up with? How many new ideas did I leave with? Of those how many are immediately actionable? How many can I act on in the future? If I had a choice of paying any amount of money for the privilege of attending the conference how much would I be willing to pay?

From both a qualitative and quantitative perspective I have to say that the conference was a great success. Very rarely do I attend a conference that I am conflicted between session times and across the whole agenda regarding which sessions to attend. This is one of the few exceptions in recent memory. I actually had to plan out my time really effectively and on a few occasions had to chose between two concurrent sessions that I wanted to attend. Needless to say the conference was programmed very well. I have to say the same for each of the keynote speakers. Of the four speakers, three of them (Chris Anderson, Jeremy Gutsche, and Dan Heath) left an immediate impacts on me, and only one left me questioning the relevance of her presentation (I later realized a lot of value from the presentation but will share that in a future post). Even so it was a good hit rate for the keynotes.

As far as the time and space goes, I have no complaints about either. There was a generous amount of time in between sessions to check voice mail, get a beverage or snack and network. The space was well used with a phenomenal ratio of space per attendee. The fact that the conference center was attached to the hotel made running back and forth between my room and the conference quite easily too. Add to all of those facts that we were within an earshot of Disney World and easily accessible transportation made the location pretty magical (pardon the pun) even for those who aren’t huge Disney fans.

The quality of the interactions perhaps one of the most important litmus tests of any conference was excellent. There was a great mix of attendees from senior executives to more junior staff members but all had interesting perspectives and plenty to share. The presenters, panelists and facilitators also represented a broad array of skills and experiences. When mixed together there was the right amount of people with the right kinds of experience so there was never a shortage of people to talk to, things to consider and ideas to glean. I walked out of the conference with a number of great ideas largely related to online communities and because that is my primary focus now, it was just in time. Some of the ideas were simply a result of synthesizing the knowledge that I absorbed by attending the sessions. However, many others were simply reactions (some positive, some not so positive) to something I saw or heard from other participants. There is no one source for ideas so I am happy to take them from where I can find them.

And as far as meeting up with new acquaintances as well as catching up with old friends the event was pretty good for that as well. Granted it wasn’t as well attended as some of the ASAE events where many of the folks that I am closest to (whats up Jamie, Jeff D., Maddie, Zach, Lindy, David, Andy and Jeff C. and a whole bunch more) but there was no shortage of great people here (whats up Greg, Ben, Rob, Andrew and Becky). Suffice it to say, a lively conversation was never far away. I was challenged as much by the conversations that I had after hours as the one’s that I had at the conference but the sum total of all of them contributed to the same end result. I learned a lot about a number of topics, learned some things about a number of great people and learned even more about myself. Without getting into the specifics (perhaps I will save this for another post) it was well worth the price of admission and then some. In fact I’d go so far as to say that any interaction that can return similar thoughts and idea generation guarantees an immediate ROI.

It goes to show that in the right environment with the right people and a common theme pretty incredible things can happen. So how do define a good conference experience? What qualitative and quantitative metrics do you use to measure personal and professional return on your conference investment? Drop your comments below. I am listening!

Anthony Williams co-author of Wikinomics was the opening session speaker. Overall, I was really impressed with his presentation style and the content. He alluded to the fact that we are currently in the midst of a perfect storm where Web 2.0, the net generation, the social revolution, economic revolution have all converged. He went on to elaborate on two of the more salient points that are impacting associations.

Web 2.0 has democratized the creation of value and no longer do you have to be a programmer to program the internet. Similarly, the net generation is a result of a demographic shift. Gen-Y is now growing up in a very unique time in history, they are as Don Tapscott stated, growing up digital. This is a generation of content creators. Growing up online has had a significant impact on how their brains are wired. Studies have shown that there are marked changes in their perception and cognitive abilities, how they learn and acquire skills, how they demonstrate empathy, altruism and other fundamental human traits.

Perhaps most valuable of all was the pragmatic way he applied key concepts from his own work and the book to Associations. Below are a few examples and key questions / statements to get the conversation started:

Wikinomics for Associations.

• Peering - How can you unleash the power of your association by using the collective knowledge of your members?
• Ideagoras - How can you tap into your members and help them become solution-providers?
• Prosumers - Create Ideastorms for customers and partners
• Wiki Organizations - Collaboration starts at home…set an example of effective collaboration by using the technology yourself.

The opening session definitely set the tone for the remainder of the day: collaboration, content, and change.

There was a break between the opening session and the afternoon educational sessions so I took the opportunity to catch up with the Blogoclump - Jeff, Jamie, Maddie, Zach, Matt, and Lindsey. That is one of the best parts of conferences, catching up with your colleagues.

The afternoon held three afternoon slots each with a number of interesting sessions so I had to pick the ones that I would attend carefully. Never an easy decision to make but important to get the most out of the conference. Ultimately I decided to stick with topics that would benefit me in the short-term as opposed to topics that I am simply interested in but may not have a practical use for.

I’ll post a overview / synthesis of each of the sessions that I attended as well as what I did Friday in a follow-up post. Stay tuned.

The 2007 Technology Conference marked my first real introduction to ASAE. It also served as my introduction to the Jeff and Ben, which led to me introduction to the Blogoclump as a whole, which in turn jump started my blogging and involvement in the association community. That chain of events made the event more than worth the price for admission and a great reason to attend it again this year. I just made the trip from PA to DC this afternoon and am happily settled into my hotel room at the Embassy Suites.

From the look at the agenda, the educational sessions look pretty solid and definitely relevant to me, especially as I make some changes at work.

I am currently in the process of shifting my focus from the leadership online learning area to leading a very large project that will impact our component organizations and is looking at literally transforming our online components into true communities of practice. I’ve been working on this project for over a year already in a stretch assignment that I did in conjunction with my other position, but it’s become apparent that due to the complexity, critical importance and my own bandwidth that a choice had to be made. I chose to go this route because of the challenge and the fact that the project involves people, technology, processes, complex systems, and a lot of change management. I also think that the project is going to really set the help establish a new baseline for our communities for quite some time to come.

I’m going to do my best to post regularly from the event and share some of the insights, conversations, lessons learned from not only the formal event but also the informal learning that takes place. It should be great and I look forward to the days ahead.