As reported from the auditorium (after Sam Sethi shouted out the very secret password for the wifi network, getting around the continued absurdity of our national telco not providing users of its swanky meeting facilities with complimentary access to their network), I headed down to London last night for my second mashup*. Sam’s live-blogging from the venue (I still reckon he prepared those posts in advance) remains a good overview of what was said, and is supplemented by posts from Piers, Ian Forrester, and ‘Paul‘ (another one!).

The topic, Identity 2.0, is certainly an important one, and each of the speakers had something interesting to say. My over-riding impression of the formal proceedings, though, was that there were far too many people on the panel, covering way too broad a gamut of Identity-related issues. As such, they all (through no fault of their own) tended toward the superficial, and the discussion careened from one important and complex topic to another, never settling on anything long enough to even unwrap it in order to see the meat beneath.

Just one of the speakers, for example, spent almost an hour covering the same ground in a podcast with me just last week, and I’ll be approaching a number of the others to see if they’d like the same opportunity to expound upon their points. Maybe we should aim to have podcasts and/or prepared position papers ahead of the next event, so that more time can be given over to debate rather than providing background? Alternatively, allocate the time to 2-3 panelists rather than so many.

So, plenty of enticing glimmers… but a little more focus from a smaller panel would have been of more value. Post-event discussion was better, and it was great to have an opportunity to spend physical time with people I tend only to encounter online…

I look forward to the next one…

Technorati Tags: BT, Garlik, Identity 2.0, mashup*, Podcasting, Sam Sethi, Talis, Talking with Talis, Vecosys

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