Mark, Thanks to you & the members of the Showcase committee. You all did a fantastic job. I would be more than happy to be a part of planning and partipating in next year’s events.

In the way of an example, here’s an alternative review of the Gov 2.0 events this past week: http://briandrake.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/inspiring-the-intra-government-2-0-movement/ The writer (1) actually attended the events so he knows what he’s talking about (2) didn’t have a negative, linkbait title (3) had some reasonable postitive and negative comments (4) is actually DOING something about it – he’s already planning a complimentary event with three other people (who all attended most of the three days) in order to drill down into a subset of topics in a different atmosphere. This is smart, commendable, and a model for others.

So.. expecting any speakers to hang around in a place they live/work or can do business in, like WDC, is unrealistic. No one is going to do so, except the people who can do neither (in your case, geeks from SV will hang for a while..).

Also, I looked at both expo and summit schedules, and Amy and Aaron are right: having 5 speakers and two moderators address something panel-style for 25 to 35 min after 5 min lightening talks is going to be superficial. You can either go deep, with one person, or go long on time for in depth results, or do the short thing with limited results. But much of what I heard back from people who attended was that both events were superficial (I couldn’t attend myself because I couldn’t justify it against my work schedule, though I believe the topic really matters).

Mark:
Rather than get agro on Amy for suggesting deeper addressing of the issues covered, or suggest that the topics and depth should wait for other events, why not figure out how to go deeper? Or explain what you are doing better? Maybe it’s a marketing problem?

Instead of tasking Amy or any of us with how to go deeper, and be more substantive, you should be doing that as part of throwing your conf. Or, change the marketing. Say: we’re doing a brief summary of everything there is to know.. breadth not depth. Set our expectations. Ether way, at least we’ll know what you intend.

But the marketing of the Summit and Expo (since they were right next to each other, thrown in tandem, they were pretty intertwined from an outsider’s perspective) led me to believe it was far more in depth than it appears actually happened.

If your attending users agree, you have a marketing problem or a product problem. Just fix it and stop attacking the users. Usability, usability, usab….

Also it’s too important a topic to assume that having a non-diverse value set cover Gov20 is okay. By definition, you should have a wide variety of value-sets showing them off your topics, whether you go wide and shallow, or deep on the topics. That is one area where wide/breadth is a must.

mary

In fact, this is why Q&A is so important… most of these people leave shortly after a session ends so it is the essential time when attendees can talk to the speakers.

Not that it’s ideal, but it’s generally a realistic expectation.

I did not sit in on all the sessions (too many, made me angry) but the handful that I did were lacking in interaction. I also feel like the speaker lineup was a bit, shall we say, cliché. I’m one voice, but I do feel like I represent a significant portion of people who attended. This is not positioning. Its just true.

I want to see G2S take an approach of NOT knowing all there is to know about next-gen government. I’d like to see real leaders iin government – real ones… Who do shit – to stand up and explain to the outside the beltway aces, who are fantastic in their own worlds but may be lacking in insight here – how this movement evolves as a productive movement.

Thanks for the link, Amy.

Also, as a sidenotem Go Ravens.