I'm sitting in the hotel lobby killing time until my cab gets here to take me to the airport so I can fly back to LA. Overall I had a great time at the conference. I met plenty of interesting people, got to see others who I hadn't seen in a while and met many people in person who previously I'd only known online. It's also great to see how much has happened in the past few months since I was around them last. This is a really exciting time for blogs and blogging and it's amazingly cool to talk to someone who has a great idea, see them start putting it in motion, and just a few months later see it actually working. It's incredibly inspiring. The people who were in the audience a year ago are the ones on the panels today.

Also, because this was a smaller conference, I think 300 people total, there was a higher percentage of people who are actually doing something which adds to the energy.

That said, 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, and I saw a lot of guys in blue shirts and khakis nodding and taking notes, but as I just mentioned there was a large number of people who are involved so much of what was being talked about was old news. Perhaps it's a side effect of how fast we're getting info with blogs, something that was the big topic a week ago is forgotten today, what is interesting is what's happening right now and what might happen tomorrow. It's actually funny to pick up a newspaper and read something today that you read about on blogs a week ago. I've actually commented about it to Caryn before, saying "can you believe some people are just now finding out about this?" So maybe that taints my perspective on the panels, but I still throughly enjoyed myself.

I think the real value of these events is getting the right people together. Earlier this year at e-tech we were joking that there were two conferences going on, e-tech was upstairs and lobbycon was downstairs. Last night at dinner (some 50 or so people from the conference all piled into a restraint to argue about the bill) the same thing was discussed. We're talking about social software so naturally social discussion works better. There's been so much talk about the back channel, and how to merge the panels and the audience to create an active discussion, meanwhile the answer has always been right outside of the conference room. Merging all this into one fluid discussion is not something we need to figure out how to do, we're already doing it. We just need to recognize where this is happening and take advantage of it.

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.

Of course, I've had a frighteningly small amount of coffee this morning so it's entirely possible this idea is a crock.

UPDATE: There's now a LobbyCon Wiki.