Intellectual Property is Usually Neither

That title has little to do with the post I've set out to write.  Sounds vaguely like a Dorothy Parker pronouncement though, so it can't be all good.

What I want to address is Nancy White's question from the comments below.  Nancy asks: "What would be on your conference wish list?"  This is not an easy question because it presupposes an intentionality that I fear I lack, particularly when it comes to professional gatherings.  I think I go to these things to see and to be seen, to meet people and to deepen nascent friendships, to gather a sense of what is happening in the world of the Internet with a focus on content creation and on the information systems technology that enables our virtual adjacency, and adds colors to our palettes, arrows to our quivers....

I come to conferences to learn, and I am willing to share, to teach, to participate in a meaningful way.  I want the accretion of my participation to add value to my work in the world of network technology consulting and project management.

So, that brief outline can probably be distilled to a bullet list, and if we are very unlucky, the bullet list can probably be transferred to an overhead projection that can bore the living spit out of a roomful of otherwise engaged people.

My conference wish list...

• A powerful assemblage of participants:  bright, knowledgeable, caring, unselfish people, with expertise in their fields.
• Mingling opportunities: a chance to more than rub shoulders, but also to converse, to laugh, to play together, a chance to follow-up after the conference.  More than that special exchange of business cards and self-conscious "networking", I want these events to share their rosters among the participants and to provide time and space for people to get to know each other more deeply than by professional reputation.
• I want a strong, coherent agenda.  I'd like a University gathering to have an academic focus, to be challenging intellectually and not to cover too much old ground.
• Small meetings within a conference are preferable to large presentation spaces.  There isn't sufficient time or social bandwidth to explore things meaningfully in a room of 100 or more participants.
• Professional facilitation is important.  Whether the participants' power comes from their brilliance, their pocketbooks, their unique glandular output or some combination, I prefer a professional facilitator engaged to lead meetings rather than a designated expert.

Nancy, these are a few of the things on my conference wish list.  And, I almost forgot... good schwag.  Send me home with a coffee cup, a flash drive, a canvas bag, something that I can put my monkey paws on later and remember the day.