After spending the first day at the conference I was struck by how many of the presentations seemed to run on, and into each other... critically so in terms of verbosity on the page and directly from the speakers. While ultimately interesting in terms of viewpoint, it took a lot of effort to get to the core of what points were trying to be made.

As a result, I reworked my own presentation on the first night, effectively giving it a theme of "Heroes and Villians" as opposed to the that suggested by the title marketing allowed me to have - "8 Concepts to Explain, Justify and Deliver Successful Identity Management".

On the day (Thu), I was concerned for attendance, as it seemed we had been given the Siberian room (i.e. a long way from the main conference rooms), making it a challenge for people to drop in a see if they liked what they saw before commiting to a session. I was surprised therefore to see the room swell and fill to over 100 folks. I was very interested when I asked how many folks were attending this type of conference for the first time, and almost half the audience put their hands up.

Well... this was either going to backfire or it was going to be the most interesting talk folks saw over the event.

I started out with the agenda - still 8 items...

1. Heroes
2. Villians
3. Teamwork
4. Money
5. People
6. MacGuffins
7. Government
8. HP

I think this provided a very unique 8 points (should I say "concepts") for the audience, and based on the feedback, it was useful as well as interesting - well, except for MacGuffins which no-one in the audience knew the definition of... so I'll use the term "gadgets" instead for any future talks.

Was it what folks expected based on the original title? Probably not.

Was it entertaining yet interesting? I think so based on the feedback I received.

If you missed it, or would like to talk some more, give me an email or commentary - tell me if it helped or hindered.