Syndicate and Hague

Most awesome moments are ephemeral and so despite the fact that I’m exhausted after a day of a good conference and good people, I needed to capture this before I forgot.

As I was leaving the post-conference Grumpy’s time, I was talking to @sh1mmer (Tom Hughes-Croucher) and he commented on what a great web community we had here.

I couldn’t agree more.

What I wish I would have had time to say is that the only reason we have a good conference is because we have a vibrant and engaged web community. We have been and strive to continue being something that responds to groundswells of need and allows our local experts to highlight interesting work and push us forward creatively and intellectually. Without a community of talented people who want to share and develop together, the conference ceases to be.

That’s all I wanted to say. And I hope anyone who didn’t see their needs met will submit a session proposal for next year!

I am currently aglow and in awe of what we accomplished yesterday. MinneWebCon wound up being a conference beyond the dreams of those of us who started gathering last fall and geeking out over our shared desire to have a conference that addressed the needs of those of us who are craftsmen (ty to Eric Meyer for that usage) of the Web. (And craftswomen. Craftspeople. Craftsgeeks.)

I had a great time in the sessions I attended and am craving the podcasts of the social networking and microformats sessions that I missed. This first conference reaffirmed my belief that the University is full of smart, talented, dedicated people who are leading in their various areas–and that people from outside the U would want to hear us and others talk about these things. It means that the things we’re interested in are the things others are interested in.

Honestly, the number of non-U people in attendance was humbling and mind-boggling to me (I believe it was 1/3).

Also, I had a great time presenting–but I dig getting up in front of people and doing my thing. It’s fun for me.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for coming–thanks to those I met in person and those who were twittering (tweeting? I’m new to that. I’ve caved. I was trying to avoid it.) with all the #minnewebcon stuff.

Hopefully next year will be better–considering none of us had put on a conference before, I think we did damn well. Or, rather, we were fucking awesome. But I’m not prone to hyperbole or anything…

The little web conference that could (MinneWebCon) has really taken off. We just made the University of Minnesota homepage. (At the bottom)

I’ve never had anything I was in leadership on have such a high profile and it’s really exciting. Yay me!!