I met with Richard ( who has by the way been a massive support for the last few months on just about every level) and Kristina the other week to discuss which bits of their huge and varied knowledge we could most usefully focus on in this 35 minute session. I may have mentioned earlier that we have decided to scrap the Q and A after the sessions in favour of break outs. Essentially each of the speakers will go to a breakout space and delegates can choose which one they would most like to have a deeper conversation with. Q and As are so often no more than an opportunity for less shy delegates to introduce themselves and what they do before tacking a generic question on the end leaving the panel to struggle while attempting an answer. By offering more intimate breakout session, the audience can talk to the speakers they really want to speak to or get on with the all important networking in the coffee bar

The stage presentations are only a part of the entire journey which started way before at the panel meetings and continues after the presentations through the breakouts and one to ones

You may have read the article i wrote for the MELT mag about Open Source Business and developing direct relationships with the consumer. I blogged it a month or so ago. K and R will touch on some of the issues the article explored

Kristina and Richard will explore revolutionary open source business models that engage users from conception, using LEGO as an exemplar

Connected technologies mean that for the first time end users can be directly involved in the design and implementation of interactive products

How can small businesses harness the wisdom of the crowds and ensure that they achieve and maintain success?

An effective online community can act as co creator, train new users, do your marketing for you and even suggest new applications

Building a successful community comes with understanding community dynamics. A community is a collection of real people. What do they do? How do they act and interact? How will the new product make their lives easier, more inspired, more interesting?

As they are using LEGO’s pioneering activities as an exemplar, we have decided to have a bit of fun and do some open source experimentation of our own. Each delegate will get a little pack of LEGO and will be asked to make a model and add this model to the LEGO table. They will be free to add to others models, take bricks for others models, add bits to a developing whole. We are interested to see what will happen as this communal model evolves over the two days. We will time lapse vid the evolving masterpiece and will post the film on YouTube so if you can’t come to the party, you will be able to see the experiment unfold after the event

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under Conference Programme, opensource, about each session. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.