So we decided to pull the How To room from the proposed format since we received very little interest - actually no interest other than from Sarah Dopp and Bill Humphries, who both offered up their tech-to-english translation talents (and they will still do so informally as will most everyone else participating). We also did not do the online voting as I had hoped since there was just about as many talk topics proposed as there were spaces available. Otherwise we believe we are staying the course with our original intentions.

So I am going to do my best to organize an agenda based on what you have expressed an interested in discussing, with some additions based on recent conversations. Some are straight from the proposals, some are based on proposals with an additional suggestion and a few are from verbal suggestions I received while traveling. Most have discussion leaders, but there are some opportunities for people to jump in and lead. You may also propose other talk topics as Lawrence did on widgets that people can discuss in the Open Space room.

Mind you, I did not want to do it this way, but with limited participation to this point in submitting proposals to the agenda there was little other choice other than switching to completely Open Space, which is not what we want to for this particular unconference - especially since some people did take the effort to propose talk topics. We felt that this is the appropriate time for an organizer to step in to ensure quality conversations about what is important to the most people in attendance. It is important to note that everyone who proposed a topic by the deadline will be leading a discussion.

That said, we will have an “Open Space” room and make time available before lunch on Thursday for people to propose alternate conversations against the main room time slots. For those of you who don’t know, Open Space refers to an event format where the individual’s work out the agenda together and then host small group conversations (or large) - it is the format that most of the Camps often use. If you are interested in proposing a Talk Topic for Friday in the Open Space room, you will need to be present by 930am on Friday when we will open up that agenda to be discussed and decided. If you want to propose a talk topic for Thursday aftenroon, you need to be in the room before noon that day.

We will also have a room for sponsors to offer demos and host discussions around their products and services. Most of the companies supporting the event know enough to not pepper you with sales pitches (tell me if they do and we will take care of it). We have done our best to encourage them to not get all ’salesy’ but instead to use the opportunity to organize a “how to get the most from their product or service” session. Or perhaps to just host a round table talking about their type of products - like MobiTV talking with people about what people want from their mobile entertainment experience.

We are taking this approach because we believe that companies who invest in the community have a right to participate in a very transparent way, within the community’s activities and with their authentic, human voices. They want to be involved in conversations with their existing users and with others who are interested in their products or services, so why not give them a clearly labeled space in which they can host conversations separate of the main talk topics. The sessions in this room are being made available to sponsors on a first come first serve basis based on the level of sponsorship. If there are sessions available as of Thursday morning in this room that have not been secured by sponsors, we will make those time slots available for Open Space conversations.

If you don’t want to see what the sponsors are offering or talking about, you never even need to go into the room - if it is more interesting for you than the main discussion or the Open Space one, please join them. The only thing remotely like a pitch you will hear in the sacrosanct space of the main room is 15 minutes about Social Media Club after lunch on Thursday - and you can skip that too if you want to, but we are very excited about the news we want to share with you and we think you will be too.

There are also a couple of surprises we are hoping to spring, but these are still up in the air - good thing we have a few backup plans for those time slots…