A View on View :: we meshed...and it was good

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Mark Evans

the blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

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we meshed...and it was good

by Mark Evans on Wed 17 May 2006 07:31 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Maybe a sign that I've already become a "seasoned" conference organizer (one event under my belt!) is my interest in how to make the next mesh better. Everything went so well that it's difficult to come up with something obvious we should have done differently. That said, there's always room for improvement so if anyone has suggestions, comments or critiques, let us know. mesh 2006 was an exciting, thrilling and rewarding experience. To see so many enthusiastic people getting together to share ideas, learn about what others are doing and making plans to work and/or work together was exciting to see happen. In many respects, conference have a funny way of becoming whatever the attendees want to make it. At mesh, they connected, engaged themselves with our speakers and participated in conversations during sessions and, I would argue more importantly, during the coffee breaks, lunches and socials.
For five "middle-aged white guys" guys (Mathew, Michael, Stuart, Rob and myself) who are not conference organizers but simply people who have a strong passion about what's happening within the Web 2.0 world, mesh was everything we hoped it would be. A big thank you to the people who decided to attend; our keynotes, panelists and workshop folks, MCC Planners for their terrific behind-the-scenes work; Encore Catering, MaRS and Allen Gelberg; GWP for the amazing name and log; Edelman for helping create the mesh message; David Crow and Sunir Shah for the mesh wiki; and, of course, our wives encouraging us to make mesh happen.
Update: Here are some post-conference thoughts from Mathew, Rob, and the mesh blog.

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Re: we meshed...and it was good

by David Crow on Wed 17 May 2006 02:37 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Sunir was instrumental in helping set up the wiki. Yeah, it's part of his sales guy job, but he really did contribute in the wiki session and with the wiki. I'll send a shout out to Sunir the wiki wouldn't have happened without him.

Re: Re: we meshed...and it was good

by Mark Evans on Wed 17 May 2006 04:14 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

..and i'll amend the blog post. by the way, congrats on the new gig!

thanks, mark

Re: we meshed...and it was good

by Vandy on Wed 17 May 2006 08:21 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mesh was a refreshing experience. Every session, workshop, lunch break and coffee break brimmed with energy and enthusiasm that was truly infectious. Mesh lived up to its tag line and truly helped people connect, share and inspire! I for one needed the inspiration and I sure did get a lot of it.

Re: we meshed...and it was good

by AGORACOM on Thu 18 May 2006 02:43 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark, as one of the few attendees with neither blogging experience, nor tech skills - yet a successful online biz - I hope I’m adding fresh perspective when I tell you the “discussion” format was excellent for people like me. The opportunity to ask questions and provide input from my perspective was invaluable in getting me to understand web 2.0 and how to implement it into my next upgrade.

SUGGESTIONS

First off, you guys didn't miss anything. Unbelievable considering it was your first event and on such short notice. If I can add suggestions to make it even better, how about the following:

1] Make sure you give all Mesh attendees the right of first refusal before opening up ticket sales to the public next year. I don’t want to miss it and hope to demonstrate our successful implementation of blogs, RSS, podcasting, etc.

2] As suggested to McDerment and his team, might not be a bad idea to create a "classified" section next year, where guys like me can post things such as "looking for a podcast expert". I could then mesh with respondents during the break periods in mini 5-minute meetings. Speed dating - but for commerce.

This provides a perfect solution for vendors/prospects to meet without going the official route of setting up vendor booths (ugh) and turning it into a trade show. Charge $10/post and $10/response to make sure only serious inquiries are made. Great way to add even more value to the conference.

Since "AGORA" is the ancient Greek term for marketplace, I'd love the opportunity to sponsor the new "Mesh AGORA".

Best,
George Tsiolis
The Tallest Greek @ Mesh

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>