So there I was up on stage delivering my little talk on advanced tagging. Well it was fun and great to get some interesting discussion on an aspect of my current favourite UE related topic, personalization and personality. I was a little disappointed with my speech as the slides were a little hurried due to an unfortunate technical issue, but the audience enjoyed it so I should probably chill.

Overall I was actually a little disappointed with the conference. I felt that the topics of the speakers and the quality of the presentations wasn’t really as good as I expected. While that is my opinion as an inexperienced presenter, I am not alone in thinking it. On the following Monday in my office we had a discussion on how we think the conference could be improved for next year. One of the first things mentioned was more community involvement in selecting presentation topics. Maybe not on the scale of SXSW, but well just more.

One thing which I thought would be a great step forward next year might be a mentoring program for less experienced speakers. We also talked about the idea of panels and workshops. I didn’t go last year due to my exciting New England roadtrip but I have heard both good and bad things about this event. I think it is fantastic that Eric Shied has put in all the work to create a really good event, and it was very well organised and fantastic to be able to see and meet so many peers. But it could be better and it is up to the community to make it so.

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