Who do you want to see at mesh 2009?
The mesh team — Rob Hyndman, Mark Evans of PlanetEye, Stuart Macdonald of Tripharbor, Mike McDerment of Freshbooks and I — have been brainstorming about mesh 2009 next spring, and we were hoping some of you might want to contribute some of your brains to the storm, as it were. Let us know who you would most like to see speak at mesh and maybe a little about what you want them to talk about — and whether you think they would fit best in the business, marketing, media or society streams — and we will do our best to make it happen. If you want to re-live the wonders of mesh ’08, check out the links here.
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14 Comments
As a PR guy I’ll second Peter Shankman; I’d also suggest execs from any of the tools that are emerging from the masses in social media – Facebook, Twitter, etc. I enjoyed the session with Garrett Camp this year – something similar would be good there.
I’d like to see a younger developer from a big company. Someone from Google would be nice. SEO is always a big topic although I’d rather get into their Chrome platform more, and hear hands on how it helps developers (there are a few neat tools in it).
That, and perhaps someone from Blizzard or Bungie.net. Understandably these are business based around video games but they serve up huge websites for their communities and have to deal with adapting to the strain on their servers and building efficient applications that appeal to their masses. Bungie.net especially has come into it’s own as far as a community.
In terms of the society stream, I’d being interested in a panel discussion about the religious and spiritual experience online. Are Canadians’ spritual needs being served online? How is online religion & spirituality different in Canada compared to the US?
I would also like to see a pioneer in US – someone like churchsmo.com? – as well as one in Cdn. spiritual community – talking about how they’re leveraging social media to further their work, draw new members, connect, etc.
I agree that I’d like to see an exploration of spirituality in the online sphere as very little talk is occurring on this facet of Canadians lives whereas at most digital conferences in the US, there are individuals presenting this aspect of online life.
I would like to see Joe Stump, the Lead Architect at Digg, do a presentation, discussing the architecture of a website like Digg. This would serve to beef up the technical side of Mesh.
I’d like to see Amber Mac invited back but not to speak about video explicitly (although she does a great presentation). I’d rather see her in a discussion (with Ingram as well) about the changes and transformations in the media industry and how this represents opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes to communicate their message and gain coverage.
Gone are the days where a press release was an effective way of getting buzz. We seem to live in an age where getting the attention of bloggers and ‘casters can drive an organization’s message more efficiently than a story in the Saturday Globe and Mail.
Thank you for asking!
I would be interested in hearing Tara Hunt again, this time on HeroCamp http://herocamp.net/ . Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester talking about white label social networks (he has a Wave report giving an industry overview coming out later this month on the topic). Charlene Li on Groundswell or any other topic she likes.
Thank you!
Connie
To play off of Connie’s comment I’d like to see a session/ panel on the challenges, benefits, and experiences of planning free “unconferences” or starting charities (i.e. Little Geeks) surrounding social change/ niche topics – I know Tara’s been doing a great job with HeroCamp, I’m working on SustainabilityCamp as we speak, and there are probably a ton of other folks out there doing similar stuff who could speak to these issues.
IMHO too often we as a communications community focus on client work or “sexy” projects where it’s easier to find people/ sponsors, etc. willing to step up to the plate. But one of the benefits of all our new collaborative technology is its ability to affect change vs. just push product. I’d like to hear from people who are passionate about these topics and just went ahead and volunteered their time to get it going, learned as they went, and gave freely back with no expected benefit. And yes, I’d be interested in talking about my experiences with SusCamp if you guys think this is a worthy topic 
Cheers,
Tamera
Comedy sites such as The Onion, Funny or Die, holytaco.com and Fox News (kidding) would be of interest to me as a topic of discussion. I would like to know how they generate content, pay their writers/contributors, and sustain an audience given that there is so much competition and such short attention spans out there. Plus i would love to have Stephen Colbert or a writer from one of the sites at the presentation as well to see how they got started.
I know I pinged all of you about this a while ago, but I never did get to blog about it (and now I’m suffering a blog outage due to server issues. Ack.) So here’s the idea again, FWIW.
One of the big factors that makes mesh such a success is, of course, you blokes – Mathew, Mark, Stuart, Michael and Rob.
It almost goes without saying that this thing wouldn’t be even a fraction as good as it is, year over year, without the passion, energy, and intelligence that the five of you have invested in it.
And yet other than the one Third Tuesday group hug we managed to pull off just before mesh ’07, there really hasn’t been an opportunity to get the five of you up on stage and have you share some of your insights into the state of the Web in Canada (and all things of that ilk).
You’re a group of really smart, experienced, plugged in and genuinely interesting chaps, and I’m telling you this not in any needless attempt to blow smoke up your collective fundaments. I would love to see a big panel session with the five founders and I think it would be a great way to wrap the conference.
This year, as in previous years, the last panel sessions of the second day came to an end in their respective rooms, and people then hung around, not wanting to let go of the buzz, eventually wandering off in groups to the various after parties. It felt like it needed one last group session to bring everyone back together again, in an attempt to summarize or group-grok the overall conference before ringing the closing bell.
I know you probably prefer to act as the foils rather than the frontmen (which is a credit to you all, of course) – but this just seems like an idea that wants to take shape (IMHO, of course), so I had to share it.
Heh – call it the mesh mosh. Throw the five of you up there in front of the assembled hordes and let ‘em fire a bunch of impertinent questions at you.
Robert X. Cringely.
He’s been writing for over 20 years on the entire silicon valley, tech, money, and software sectors with insight both spot on and dead wrong but always thought provoking.
He’s taking a break from journalism and his column stops mid-december.
To alleviate my and many other Torontonians’ I,Pulpit-Withdrawal-Symptoms, having Cringely at Mesh in April 2009 would be just the thing.
HiMY SYeD
Torontopedia.ca
I’d like to see Matt Cutts from Google – can’t think of a time I can ever remember him coming to Canada.
Peter Shankman of HARO — a great free resource for PR companies to connect with journalists.
http://www.helpareporter.com/