A few other people had... issues with the way BlogOn was staged.
Sean Bonner was a bit nicer about it in his blog:
I think a lot of the panels were aimed at people who maybe weren't as dialed in on all the subjects being discussed. To someone with limited knowledge on the world of blogs it was probably very interesting...
He has a slightly different proposal on how to solve the conference problem, one that I would be willing to try :-)
So I'm proposing this - let's actually do it and see what happens. We'll pick a hotel in some city with a big lobby with wifi access and a date, and that's it. No panels, no time limits, no structure, no sponsors trying to push their products. Just the people and the lobby. We'll publish the list of attendees as soon as they sign up and that will be the conference. A long weekend, or a few days during a week. I don't know if it will work, but if anyone thinks it's an interesting idea post here, or trackback and if enough people actually think it's worthwhile I'll see what I can do about setting it up.
Marc Cantor echoes Sean's call for a "lobbycon" but calls it the "Open Source Conference" writing "WE (the people) need to just find someplace to hang out - BOTH in meatspace and virtual space and show eher the REAL power is." And
Mike Rowehl has some good observations as well, pointing out that none of the presenters bothered to use the wiki provided by BlogOn organizers. Mike has a list of on topic questions that he wished had been addressed at the conference.
Hopefully the conference organizers will get involved in this blog dialog and tell us what they plan on doing differently next time.
