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by Brad Wilson.
Original Post: Gnomedex 5.0: Post-Mortem
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Gnomedex is 24 hours past. I've been to 3, 4, and 5 now. Here's my random thoughts on the success of the event:
The facility was fantastic, on an entirely different scale from 3 and 4. This is the difference between hosting a conference in a conference center, and a conference in a hotel ballroom. There's no question that the room layout was for the best.
Many kudos to PubSub for sponsoring the power drops everywhere. You didn't see people in the hallways scrambling for an outlet between talks. Similar kudos to all the people who kicked ass to make the WiFi usable.
The caliber of presentations was overall much better than the previous two years (not to pick on anybody in particular). I'm still not entirely fond of the multi-person panels, because it seems like you end up with a lot of wandering as the panelists (and the audience) all try to get focus on their specific topic.
The general tone has changed dramatically from GD3 to GD5, for the better. I felt like GD3 was used as an excuse by a bunch of self-assigned "A list" bloggers to get together in cliques and get drunk, ripping on others. This was no fault of Chris'; it was just the growing pains of the conference. Whereas GD3 felt like an always nearly-out-of-control blogger party, GD5 felt like a professionally run and attended event. (GD4 felt like the transition between the two; the move to be more professional, hampered by decisions to entice the partiers to attend.)
You can't say enough good things about Ponzi. Besides being extremely good at making sure everything is running well, she is above all nice to everybody. Chris, to quote Best Week Ever, "Upgrade!". :-)
I'm already looking forward to GD6. Congrats, Chris!
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