Debrief notes

Mark and David sat down to debrief a week or so after the Toronto Open Everything event. Here are some of the things they noted. If you were at the event, feel free to add your reflections as well.

Things that (mostly) worked

The concept and title. People were attracted to the Open Everything idea, and intuitively got it. People know there is something bigger in play here than just software and Wikipedia. This said, we should have defined the concept better and been more clear up front about what we think the 'essence of open' is (even if people want to disagree).
Speedgeek. Good balance between well known examples of open (Ubuntu) and more surprising thins (Jane's walk). One interesting suggestion: give the speedgeek listening groups 15 mins to debrief at the end of the whole session.
Seneca panel. The idea of going deep with one excellent case study worked well. People enjoyed the talk and the ability to get into detail. Only downside: we should have had an educator on the interview panel as the focus was a little too much on the software side.
Participant mix. We had a diverse group of people, with the obvious tech and open content geeks plus people from public policy, social enterprise, faciliation, etc. Could have been a bit less techie. Work on this next time.
BYOB and dinner venue. Having the dinner at CSI where people could bring their own wine, circulate and stay as long as they wanted helped with post event networking and synthesis. A restaurant setting would have been way less succeessful.

Improvement needed

Content balance. We didn't get the overall content balance right. We need to have 50/50 impressive and obvious examples (wikipedia) and suprising and pushing the edge (public policy consultations using a bar camp model). This is critical for future events.
Time and schedule. The 2pm to 8pm format was too short, and didn't include enough time for open ended discussions. We probably need a full day plus an optional evening event (a minibar?). Also, need to leave more room for open space / ad hoc sessions ... but without dropping some of the programmed stuff that worked well (speedgeek + seneca).
Mapping open. There was a great deal of promise in the 'mapping open' session ... but it pretty much failed. Two likely reasons: 1) we didn't come it with a clear framework on the 'essence of open' ... but rather wanted people to invent this and 2) we did it at the end of the day when people just wanted to eat and drink. Next time, we need a clear framework and an owner for this part of the event.
Blogging and documentation. While we had a great blog squad, it's been tough to actually get material online. We should have had a 'post event' plan that people understood and agreed to in advance. Also, we should have been taking notes directly into the wiki and not onto laptop harddrives. Still, some good content is trickling online ... the blogsqaud idea was worth it.

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