dConstruct is over for another year. I think everyone is in agreement that this was the best one yet. The parties were full of WIN, the venue was great and the speakers were on top form. Admittedly, the weather was crap but that’s somewhat beyond our control.
Some of the attendees have posted their thoughts and summaries of the event:
Although I spent most of the day fretting about closing the conference, I was able to pay enough attention to notice that all of the talks were excellent, from Steven Johnson’s long-zoom view of bottom-up local knowledge to the Dopplr guys completely owning the stage and the audience with their dynamic double act.
Then I delivered my talk.
As predicted, it divided opinion. But I was surprised by the amount of people who really, really liked it. I was expecting a 50/50 division but it seemed more like an 80/20 split between positive and negative reactions.
Some of my favourites include Dan Griffiths saying diabolical final session
and James Tenniswood remarking My ass has gone to sleep. So bored by the last speaker at dconstruct.
Later, Andy Hume betrayed his lack of faith when he said Jeremy very nearly wrecked the day with a talk that was all too close to slipping up it’s[sic] own arse for the first ten minutes.
The universal reaction at the start, according to Twitter, was Where the hell is he going with this?
But by the end I think I managed to get my point across, namely always listen to Donald Rumsfeld.
The audio from the talk will be available soon. In the meantime, you can read the hypertext or download the slides.
Personally, I had a blast delivering my presentation. All of my nervousness evaporated once I was on stage and for half an hour I tried to convey the sense of wonder I was trying to encapsulate when I said:
The spirit of the beehive and the ghost in the machine are one and the same.
To those who didn’t like my pretentious wank …ah well, that’s understandable and you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
To those who took the time to tell me that you liked The System of the World, thank you very much indeed.