So #Cong14 has come and gone and I’m happy I made the trip up and across the country from Wexford. I’m glad the journey afforded me the opportunity to catch up with one enormous little woman, and to meet and get to know a hyperlocal D12 native and a sciencey twerson.
My huddles worked out well. I really enjoyed discussions on social community, politics, material culture, the need for a central digital repository, push tweeting without engagement, the media and their stances, content vs curation, the evolution of money and much much more.
I regret not huddling with Porn, An Garda Síochána and the Diaspora that created so much buzz from the groups I missed.
The great irony of the day for me is that I neither tweeted nor checked-in over the entire day. I had no 3G coverage with o2 so instead of stressing myself out to get the broadband codes in the many and varied venues, I decided to go cold turkey and just be in the moment – be present rather than tweet and it was liberating, if not ironic. I caught up with people from the past, met new people and then put faces and names to twitter handles. Apparently there have been nearly 600 tweets for #Cong14 over the past 3 days. With an average of 12 words per tweet, we absolutely spoke more than 7,800 words each about Cong14 over the past few days – so I guess everyone present, in a way, chose to to be present rather than present their attendance if that makes any sense. Anyway traveling hundreds of miles to huddle face-to-face certainly makes sense to me and I’ll definitely be back for #Cong15.