It’s interesting, your note about preferring insights and reflections over summaries reminds me of something else about the conference. Last year I found the Twitter back-channel conversations hugely valuable, as people reacted to and discussed the talks and presentations in real time.

This year, however, partially due to the quantity of people “live-tweeting,” I found the conference twittersphere dominated by tweets that simply restated the content of the talk instead of commenting on it. I’m sure this is more helpful to someone NOT at the conference, but I missed the analysis and reaction that leads to great conversation. Hopefully next year we can find a way to have two conference Twitter channels – one for repetition, and one for discussion.

I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Nathan Shedroff when he was in Toronto in November and I’m glad to see he shared with the Interaction’10 crowd some of the ideas that he shared while he was here, namely, “All design is the process of evoking meaning.” Many of us have arrived at this idea through various paths and it helps to be reminded from time to time since it can get lost in the details.

Yves Behar’s quotation “If it’s not ethical, it can’t be beautiful,” resonated strongly with me, too, so I’m glad that Jon Kolko raised it in the context of meaning, especially since it’s something I would have liked to discuss this year. Too many think that when we talk about ethics in design we are talking about prescriptive and deterministic codification when it’s so much more than that limited view. Hopefully we’ll get to explore the ethical line of thinking in Boulder next year.

As I view the conference through the lenses of those who attended, I find the personal insights and reflections much more compelling than the in-depth summaries, so thanks again for sharing your unique view and sketches to the mix. You’ve given me food for thought.