Thanks!
We just wanted to thank everyone - speakers, moderators, attendees, volunteers, MCC Planners, MaRs, Encore Catering, family - who made mesh ‘07 such a huge success. There is no other way to describe what happened over the past two days as anything other than amazing. With mesh still fresh in everyone’s mind, let us know what you thought and how we can make mesh even better.
Posted in mesh news
6 Comments
It was a terrific conference. Great topics, great people. Only suggestion is the mornings could have used a couple of power point type presentations mixed in with the conversations. Last year Michael Geist’s slide presentations was a highlight.
Mesh was a great “unconference”. Apart from giving Torontonians the rare opportunity to mix and mingle with the folks from the Silicon Valley, it truly inspired budding entrepreneurs like me. Great job, organizers!. We look forward to Mesh ‘08.
One suggestion would be to make the Q/A sessions more conversational. The audience should not only ask questions , but should also offer their comments, opinions on the questions being asked by others in the audience. Having said that, I do realize that time is always a constraint for such conversations. May be real-world discussion forums is the answer.
Let me start by saying that you guys are great - kudos for putting together a first rate conference in the way that you do.
There are a lot of good things about Mesh - good food, good wifi (Arrington is right), you bring together the full community, some breakouts are exceptionally good (Jeff Howe’s panel comes to mind) and there is a genuine effort to include the audience.
That said, I’m left with the lingering feeling that Mesh is less than the sum of its parts. Why?
1. Conversations are not content. With the complete rejection of powerpoint presentations, organizers ensure that the keynotes have little in the way of real content. Some are entertaining (Arrington, Buckmaster) but few offer real insight or good takeaways. After two Mesh’s, the best keynote is still Giest’s, not because I agree with him but because there was actual content.
2. The 15 minutes of fame should be dropped - bad presentations last year and uninteresting dialogue this year.
3. Networking is great but the ratio of “mesh†time to content time is ridiculous. Delegates don’t need yet another 30 minute break every couple of hours. There is enough fat on the mesh bones to add an extra full session each day.
Thanks to all for putting on a truly great conference, Mesh is like Christmas to me.
Here are the things I liked best:
1) Meeting people (meshing) at the conference was certainly the highlight this year as it was last year. The longer breaks between sessions were very nice and I hope you continue to do that.
2) The conversation with Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist was my favorite conversation. Austin, Tom, and Michael Arrington were also very good.
3) The Mars venue is a very comfortable and appropriate venue.
4) Rachel sklar can light up a room with that smile but maybe that is not unique to Mesh 
Here are things that I feel could be improved:
1) Mix up the content from the two days. The media track on day 1 left me with some time slots where nothing interested me, but on day 2, there were timeslots were two or more panels were equally interesting to me. Unfortunately, I missed some panels (or part of them) as they were sheduled at the same time as other panels I wanted to see. Staggering the “tracks” from the two days would have allowed some people to see more of what they wanted.
2) The 15 minutes of fame did little for me this year because I could not “see” what the presenters were talking about. The old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words. I understand the move away from powerpoint presentations and laptops but this just verbal communication did not work to communicate the presenters message and keep me interested.
3) The conference was very good this year as it was last year and I think it can largely stay the same for next year but I also think some new innovative elements can be introduced to keep people who have attended from the start interested. I am not sure what those elements are but perhaps ideas such as the following which were made at the conference: have some of the panelests interview each other. For example: Michael Arrington could have asked questions to Edelman - or maybe even Arrington to Buckmaster, now that would be interesting.
Thanks again, very well done and I look forward to it next year.
Thanks for a great event. I walked away with some terrific ideas to use with my clients and share with my network of consultants.
In particular, the philanthropy discussion with Tom Williams and Austin Hill was intriguing. We all tend to think of fundraising for non profits in a very traditional way. But I can now see that establishing a community around a particular cause can drive a lot of inadvertent donations - perhaps more so than simply going for the big ‘ask’.
One suggestion for next year is to include a brief synopsis of each session on the schedule. A little more detail than just the title and presenter’s names would be really helpful in making decisions as to which session to attend.
Looking forward to Mesh ‘08!
I’m tagging posts that have suggestions as “mesh_suggestions” - so we can keep track of what folks think we ought to do different the next time.