We spent last week in Yelapa, Mexico, and were thrilled to hear that the Obama inauguration would be celebrated in the town. We joined numerous expats at Manguito’s in Yelapa (Luis makes the best mexican food there!) Watching the television while roosters crowed and horse drawn carts went by made it a unique event!

I came. I listened, I thought, I twittered, I summized, I engaged. Inverge was a very fun experience, but often more from the banter going on via twitter between the attendees from their computers. At the recent Oregon Association of Nurseries Farwest conference attended two weeks ago, typing on a computer would have been considered rude. At Inverge, it’s pretty much sanctioned and encouraged. After all, the more chatter, the more exposure to your desired audience – other geeks reading your posts.

The commentary sounded like a fun graduate school seminar – a lot of banter, notetaking, discussion about core ideas. At the OAN conference, everyone is pretty much from Oregon, but I met no new people there. The atmosphere just wasn’t conducive.

At the Inverge conference, I chatted with lots of people on twitter and then tweeted up with a bunch of very cool new people who I hope to see more of at other technology events. Portland is so great for this technophile experience, and I obviously benefited socially with new contacts as well.

Maybe I should admit that I talk geek much better than fertilizer. At any rate, here’s my great Inverge idea: Instead of putting up a rotating sponsor ripple water thing on an available screen, run the summize.com conversation on #inverge up on the screen. C’mon, take a risk! I mean, what is UP with this “being lectured at” style of conference format – hello, let the speakers talk with us not at us! I mean, what is the best format for sharing ideas? Discussion!

Doing an updating summize screen also would have highlighted the true performance art aspect of Amber Case’s (@caseorganic on twitter) talk, which included her live speech AND a constant twitter banter of convgruent ideas that she had @brampitoyo load for her DURING her speech, so she was posting while she was speaking. She was totally cognizent of potential conversation going on during her talk and decided to contribute to it. Bravo!

Somebody tell Steve, will you?