As you read today’s post, I need to lay out my initial perspective and, perhaps, my personal bias on conferences before I leap into an ongoing recap of today’s events.
The concept of unconferences is one I embrace as well as its central premise: there is more intelligence collectively in the audience than any given set of presenters. The exceptions yesterday were the global perspectives of several of the presenters on geopolitics, macroeconomics and the core science behind energy and I found these quite valuable. As a consequence to the way this conference is delivered, there are less opportunities to interact with folks than others I’ve attended and/or methods to allow people to cluster around specific topic areas (e.g., tracks of topics, etc.).
That said, many of the side conversations I’ve been having are remarkably prescient about the future and have been probing about things that are *not* being covered at PUSH…like the Internet as a platform; the massive inefficiency and cycle times being reduced in virtually every industry and NGO because of it; and the biggest impact of what is occurring right now: the acceleration in human connection and what that means to the future of everything occurring here.
Perhaps it’s the luxury I have of attending numerous cutting edge conferences in a host of areas as well as being married to a trend forecaster. Combine that with the volume of thought leaders I follow daily and books I read (specifically on the future) and I’m probably somewhat atypical as an audience member — though I’ve gravitated to six other people whose perspective is exactly the same as mine.
One thing I will mention, however, about their positioning this as an unconference. What is atypical is that all sessions are in the theater and all attendees see every presenter. Therefore all the participants have a synchronous experience which doesn’t do what I experience at all other conferences: I get bummed that I can’t attend every single session and feel like I’m missing something at other ones.
Come back periodically today as I’ll be publishing after the morning and afternoon sessions.
Steve’s Social Stuff