The Good the bad and the weird of Gnomedex

The Good:

1. The Derek Miller interview – well done and very touching
2. Guy Kawasaki – he was the real keynote of the show
3. The Ignite Speakers – provided a much needed spark to day 2.

The Bad:

1. The internet – the first day was really bad but did improve
2. The hecklers – most attendees come to listen to the speaker, not people yelling at the speakers.
3. To pitch or not to pitch? – After Calacanis got blasted by Winer, several speakers didn’t know if it was ok to talk about their product or not and this left everyone uncomfortable.

The Weird

1. One of the speakers telling us about his favorite “open source spam product”.
2. Another panelist asking the audience if everyone has heard of Newsvine and WordPress. That answer would be yes, we have. Many times.
3. Scoble not getting fired – At the very end of arguably the best session of the event where Chris interviewed Derek Miller and the audience gave him a very touching standing ovation, Scoble was standing near the stage. When people sat down, he yelled out to Chris on stage that he wasn’t fired as was being reported in Valleywag. The timing was so bad that people were talking about it in the chat room hours later. In Roberts defense, he spent most of the event out in the hall so maybe he came in late and didn’t understand the circumstances of his remark.

All things considered, Chris and gang pulled off a fantastic event.