Well it has been a very busy 2 days at ad:tech and it has taken me just a little while to recover but in a good way.  Big takeaways from the event would have to be:

1.    Social media is still clearly a subject that interests many people- The social media focused sessions would have held three times as many peoples interest as the others.  Perhaps because it’s new and people are still grappling with how to use it or perhaps because attitudinally, in terms of the way we communicate with an audience, it is the future direction of advertising.

2.    Twitter was the stand out star – The Twitter session itself which was packed to the rafters and received lots of great feedback after the event.  The second standout observation was peoples use of twitter at the event.  Some 4000 tweets (see the adtech stream here )  (standing room only) but because of the active twitter participation we saw by delegates. Lucas Ng put up a list Twitter Usernames .  We were not sure how the three tag system (#atsyd, #atsyd1, #atsyd2, #atsyd3) would work with the different streams but everyone seemed to adopt to on the day and feedback was that it really helped the folks at home follow along.  The challenge for next year (assuming twitter is still the tool of choice will be getting those conversations integrated back into the live conversation in the room.

3.There were alot of industry folks (as in digital industry) who participated either in person or virtually but while we are a growing group, I still wonder sometimes if we are just talking to ourselves…  The mission for next year is to get the traditionalists there.

General feedback I received at the event was good, have received lots of great suggestions and inspirations for next year also.  There are a number of blog posts up about the event and some of the speakers have posted their content.  I’m compiling a list of these for publication here so please let me know if you have posted anything and I will add it to the list which.  Also, feel free to submit it to the brain for the voice of the industry section.

We really want to know what you think, what you loved and what you hated and yes…we have noted the wifi issue.  Next year, we are hoping one of the big telcos will show us how to do it right :-).

Most importantly, we really want to know what we can do to improve so suggestions for next year PLEASE.  Make a comment, send us a post, lets chat.  I will be letting you know what we are thinking and how we are working with your ideas as we get things together for next year.

Thanks to all the speakers who put in the time and effort to contribute to the content.  Thanks to the tweeters who so wonderfully documented the sessions and thanks to the attendees for their time and active participation.