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Head London hub by - bru 76

Last week, we made a little history when over 70 speakers and 500 attendees from around the world congregated on the Interwebs for the <head> web conference and, in doing so, took part in creating the world's first virtual web conference. Last week, thanks to you, we proved that there is a new model for conferences that is engaging, environmentally-friendly, and affordable.

Voilà, l'âge de la Conférence 2.0 commence

Presenters spoke from home, from hotels, from our local conference hubs in London, Brighton, and San Francisco, and, in one case, from a car parked on a street-side in downtown New York City.

I'm overwhelmed by the wonderful reviews I'm reading from attendees and speakers alike, as well as the lovely feedback we've been receiving directly. I'd like to share some of this with you here, starting with this gem from my friend Jeremy Keith, who opened the conference with his excellent talk on The Long Web:

It spanned three days and as many continents. It was a preposterously ambitions undertaking and, incredibly, it worked! (Read the full post.)

One of the things that I loved about the conference was finding out more about the things I had heard of, but knew nothing about (both Richard Rutter and Ann McKeekin's talks come to mind) . . . Thank you again for a wonderful conference, I'm looking forward to next year. (Jonathan Ferguson, attendee.)

I had great time interacting with the crowd by telling my stories, answering questions, giving away books and hopefully instilling some inspiration to the one hundred in my apartment. (Christopher Schmitt, speaker; read the full post.)

I really enjoyed the conference sessions last weekend. Congratulations on a great event! (Stuart Giles, attendee.)

The Head Conference was an ambitious, timely, and much needed creative exploration of the potential for "green" conferencing using Adobe Connect Pro, Second Life and local conference hubs in various cities. (Tish Shute, read the full post.)

Great job with the Head Conference. I had a blast . . . Was surprised how interactive and social and online conference could be. Already looking forward to next year. (Mark Grossnickle, attendee.)

All by all, it turned out to be an amazing experience, that not only made you realize again why you love internet, but also contributed to your sense of commitment to the . . . community. I guess the best thing I like about <head> is that you can come together, interact and learn from the cracks, sitting in your lazy chair, no matter where you are! (Jeff Winder, attendee; read the full post.)

(I won't go on so this post doesn't turn into a testimonials page — suffice to say we got a heap more of lovely reviews on the web, on twitter, and in emails — thank you all so much for sharing them with us. We're wonderfully happy by the response, and we're listening to your feedback so that we can evolve the conference and make it even better for next year.)

Undoubtedly, following the success of <head>, we are going to see more conferences embrace virtual aspects and I can only assume that we will see more virtual conferences popping up. <head>, of course, will not be standing still. We have learned tons by staging this conference and I have very definite plans for where I want to see <head> go next as we evolve and continue to explore the concept of Conference 2.0.

In closing, I want to once again thank our wonderful speakers, sponsors, micro-sponsors, and, of course, our attendees for breathing life into the conference and making <head> a success — thank you all for your support and here's to an even better <head> 2009!

Photos

Related posts from speakers

Related posts from attendees

(If you have a blog post or review that I missed, please leave me a link to it in the comments — thanks!)

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