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Potential
Another day another mind-blowing conference - today it’s 2gether08 which feels a bit like I imagine it is to crawl around inside Steve Moore’s head. Hundreds of gobsmackingly smart folk talking big, talking social, talking good.
I’m thinking again about the potential for action that this sort of event creates. Loads and loads of people, talking big ideas, connecting disparate subjects and disciplines, talking about what they’ve done, what they’re doing, what they’d like to do. Ooooh yes, let’s do that, let’s do this, oh my god, can you imagine if we did that? Let’s talk about it, let’s make it happen.
It’s something that happens every week at the Tuttle Club. People get enthused about an idea or another person or their work and they talk animatedly about what they might do and how they might collaborate. A small number of those collaborations actually have come quickly to fruition. Sometimes this is because they’re at the level of “hey! what if we could mash up flickr and google maps and ‘ta-dah’ - you know” ie it’s not really a new idea, just new to the people involved. Other times it’s more about already busy people having great ideas bu they don’t have time, or money, or time to generate the money to do it.
However, it is a weekly experience for me and I’m getting used to seeing the realisation of awesome potential and the later associated deflation. That’s in a group of 30 or so people. So it’s not surprising that we get it in spades at conferences like today.
So. Much. Potential.
I feel it physically. It’s painful. I think sometimes it’s the thing that winds me up most about events - the raising of potential and the lack of resolution. I know I’m going to feel it again tomorrow. The only answer I have by the way is something Umair Haque said this morning: “Organise something” Y’know like “just do it” but no, really do it.
Irony Alert: this post lacks a real resolution
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© 2008 2gether08. 
I’m enjoying watching the conference and participating in different ways. I’m trying to supress the frustration that comes from being in another city, running a startup social enterprise working in exactly this field and being, to put it bluntly, too poor to come and take part in all these new meeting points going on.
I really, really hope we can build a community of people that can do all this exciting stuff online and that some resources (and conferences!) can come to places like mine to increase online connectivity, otherwise I fear people in places outside the hubs where the cool kids hang out are going to be left even further behind.
She comments sadly, conscious that everyone is probably enjoying a nice cold beer now by the Thames.
Never mind, looking forward to tomorrow’s lineup!
[...] first day of 2gether08, Lloyd Davis wrote an enthused blog entry about its potential and voiced his concern for it may not get realized, and this unconference may [...]