Though this is the second day of SAF, it is really the first official day.  Yesterday was actually a pre-conference day.

Today, we had three keynote speakers.  Neil Leslie and Tim O’Brien from Microsoft, and Bob Pearson from Dell.  One interesting thing about the keynote speakers at this event is the that they were all limited to 30 minutes.  When hearing this, I initially felt that they would be too time constrained to be able to deliver a complete message, but all three were successful.

After the keynotes, the follow-on break out sessions, and lunch, we all gathered together for an Open Space session led by my friend, Steven “Doc” List.  This was my favorite part of the day (excluding some one-off conversations that recurred throughout).

Open Space, in a nutshell, has gets everyone together to nominate topics for discussion.  Once the topics are decided and organized (I am REALLY skimming over this part), everyone attends the topic discussions that they desire to hear or participate in.  I don’t know how many formats Open Space “supports” during topic deliberations, but I experienced two.  One topic I attended, the use of social networking in the enterprise and the challenges it presents such as privacy and security, was setup as chairs in a circle for discussion.  This was a good and productive session, but it was nothing compared to the first one I attended.

The first session I attended, “I don’t get Twitter”, had too many people to put all the chairs into one big circle.  So it was arranged with a “fishbowl” in the center.  The fishbowl consists of four chairs are placed in the center of the room in a circle facing inward.  There are some very basic rules here.  No one is allowed to participate in the discussion unless they are sitting in the fishbowl.  Only three people are allowed to sit in the fishbowl, meaning that there must always be one empty chair.  As someone wants to enter the discussion, they enter from the audience and sit in the empty chair.  One of the original three, usually the one that has been there the longest, must exit the fishbowl.  Once out of the fishbowl, you return to being part of the audience and can no longer participate in the discussion without reentering the fishbowl.

The “I don’t get Twitter” session was packed!  There were 10 topics run in parallel for a conference of about 300 attendees and there were over 50 people in this session alone.  There were many interesting questions posed during the session.  “What about security/safety of our children as they expose personal and geographic information about themselves?”, “How is Twitter monetized?”, “Does Twitter detract or enhance the work environment and should employers care?”, “What happens when a company is built on Twitter and Twitter ‘goes away’?”. 

They were all very good topics of discussion and there were many participants.  I personally, was addicted to the fishbowl and found myself reentering it several times during the session.  As you may have expected, the Tweeps in the audience were tweeting about being in an Open Space discussion about Twitter during the discussion.

The session lasted 50 minutes and was exhilarating.  I have asked Doc to facilitate our Open Space at the Atlanta ITARC in February and now that I have participated in Open Space, I am extremely excited.

I was the last person in the fishbowl (go figure) and I announced, as everyone left, that Doc had just tweeted to me “have you explained Twitter yet?”

To follow me or Doc on Twitter our aliases are jdecarlo and athought respectively.

And there you have it.

Joe.

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