My first MinneWebCon experience was overwhelmingly positive. My head is swimming with ideas from the day’s presentations.

A few standouts:

• Eric Meyer’s morning keynote was both inspirational and refreshing. His books almost single-handedly helped me learn CSS. It’s always a treat to hear from someone who has been involved with the web since the beginning and continues to be a strong voice in the industry (especially as advocate for web standards).
• Michael Cizmar, president and chief architect for MC+A, really expanded my understanding of Google gadgets. His company was the first Google Enterprise Provider and has had some imporessive results in that area. I’m fired up to go create my own now.
• Laurie McGinley cleared up a range of misconceptions I had about microformats. Not only are they compatible with the ideals of web standards, but strongly supported by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. LinkedIn was an early adopter, autogenerating vcards for users. The next version of IE reportedly has more robust microformat support as well. I’m anxious to implement my own on a variety of upocoming client projects
• A track of impromptu unsessions (ala barcamp) cropped up after lunch. The U of M’s own Peter Fleck led a lively discussion about social networking.

My biggest takeaway from the event was something unexpected. I usually rate the success of a conference on the amount of new ideas gained and number of business cards given/received. While the new idea ratio was respectably high, my stack of cards remained untouched. Instead, I gained 10 new Twitter followers (and followees) and a handful of Facebook friends. Over the course of the day I communicated more via these channels, and in more depth, than a standard snack table chat/business card pass would normally allow. Twitter was being heavily employed all day to live-tweet presentations, host post-session chats, discuss off-topic sidebars and more. It became almost an additional track of the conference. With the help of #minnewebcon tagging, I was able to follow the conversation outside my own circle. Which turned out to be a great way to expand my circle. All in all, a great day full ideas and conversations, and yet another way Twitter can be employed to add value to an event.

Tags: conference, minnewebcon, socialnetworking, twitter