Here’s the BlawgThink final wrap up… Then enough navel gazing and back to the regularly scheduled irreverence you’ve come to expect here.

There were too many people I met to name them all, but I was very glad for the opportunity to meet everyone. It was very nice to get a chance to meet some people who I’ve read regularly for some time, and others who I intend to start reading post haste. I’ll be updating the ol’ blogroll shortly.

A huge thank you to our gracious hosts Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann who did an outstanding job.

It was also a real pleasure to meet entrepreneurs (yes, solos are entrepreneurs) like Carolyn Elefant and Brandy Karl. They provide refreshing perspective, especially since I’m entrepreneurially inclined myself.

Some other refreshing perspectives to blogging issues, problems and solutions, came from Sabrina I. Pacifici, Henry Copeland, and Jeff Beard. Who all participated in one of the most interesting sessions of the second day.

I got some great tips for streamlining my blog from Fred Faulkner and I have to thank Karl Craine for his generous support of a law student with food.
Finally, it was a distinct pleasure to meet Doug Sorocco who was not only super helpful but an all around great guy, and Evan Schaeffer who is also great and very supportive of student blawgers.

Thanks to everyone involved, and I look forward to meeting more bloggers in person as I continue to develop the content here on Preaching to the Perverted.

For the last “session” of the day, I sat down with, Matt Homann and some others to discuss the future of LexThink and share ideas about the successes and failures of the conference. Evan Schaeffer, Carolyn Elefant, and Henry Copeland had some great ideas and suggestions For ways to make not only this conference better–but also taking it to a new level with other topic ideas, etc. Some really good ideas came out of this that I’d love to see implemented in future conferences.

One thing is certain: Henry Copeland gets it. The guy has really great, insightful comments that show he’s really on the ball.

Here are some specific suggestions I had for making BlawgThink/LexThing even better:

1. The sponsorships and product giveaways were great, but it sure would be nice to see a Mac sponsor!

2. A little more instruction on the “Open Space” would be nice; having the list of “Open Space” sessions better organized would have been helpful.

3. A little better communication before the conference would be nice; the blog and basecamp were OK, but a tad unreliable. LexThink might want to ReThink their hosting company.

Keep in mind, these are pretty minor criticisms. When you have a two day conference and you can only generate three minor criticisms, that’s a damn good conference!

Here’s one of the real successes of the “Open Space” conference model: I’m interested in wikis. I have some personal/business projects that I would like to collaborate on and wikis seem like they might be a good application. So I threw it out there as a topic idea, got my space, and Viola! An instant session on wikis.

Several people came together to share what they knew about wikis, to talk about how they want to use wikis, and Doug Sorocco gave a great demonstration–ad hoc–installing a wiki and editing some pages on the fly. This was exactly the kind of session that makes a conference like this great.

My first “Open Space” session of the day was one on Knowledge Management and blogs. It was a lively and interesting discussion, with two camps: the “personal voice” camp and the “enterprise blog” camp. In reality, I think both are valid approaches to blogs and leveraging them as knowledge bases. On the plus for the “enterprise blog” vein is the idea that content needs classification and coordination, the value in the blog is the timely dissemination of valuable information. This requires a more controlled and moderated methodology for content creation and publication. On the plus side for the “personal voice” approach is the obvious: content generated by the expert with a unique voice is valuable content.

In the end, I came away with some good insight that there are different applications for blogs and to state the obvious again–different blogging approaches are necessary for different audiences and applications. The highlight of the session for me were the insights from Sabrina I. Pacifici who really understands the needs of enterprise blogging as well as being a prolific blogger in her own right. Great session!