Results to the Defrag Lorain survey out of 28 responses

 

#1. First, what logistics worked well for you at the Defrag Lorain conference? Check all that apply –

Location 14

Conference meeting facility 19

Technology access 12

Food 5

Parking 21

 

#2. Next, what did you like about the conference program? Check all that apply –

Concurrent sessions 8

Quality of speakers 16

Diversity of topics 18

Meet people face-to-face 20

Interactive conversations 15

 

#3. What enhances your conference experience? Check all that apply –

Conference pre-read materials 7

Entrepreneurs sharing their stories 17

Industry exhibits and demonstrations 12

Professionally facilitated sessions 16

Time to meet with out-of-town visitors 14

 

#4. Did you...

make new connections at the conference? 21

learn about a new digital media innovation? 14

begin a new conversation about a new collaboration? 16

 

#5. What industry sectors would you like to learn more about? Check all that apply –

Videogames, and education 16

Social software technology 14

Entrepreneurship and business development 19

Modeling, animation, etc. 12

Marketing and branding 13

Art, technology & mixed media performance 11

 

Are there other areas of industry you would like to add?

➢ Ecology/Environment

➢ Education - Best practices and cost effective ways to deploy the latest technology in our public schools.

➢ None

➢ data, data-mining, security, networks, thin clients, remote access, mobility solutions, connectivity solutions, cable and phone wires versus radio/satellite

 

#6. Check the areas of economic development you would like to learn more about:

Open Source Economic Development 12

Collaborative Leadership 7

Social Networks 9

Strategic Doing 8

 

#7. Regarding the Defrag Youngstown conference in mid-July...how much would you be willing to pay for a two-day conference?

$25 per day 10

$50 for two days 6

$75 for two days 0

 

#8. How can I-Open support your work between conferences? Check all that apply –

Provide access to an on-line collaborative community for e-project development 10

Establish working groups to advance initiative development 5

Offer I-Open curriculum, civic forums and/or leadership learning labs 9

Publish a news source for current events in the digital media industry 5

 

#9. Would you, or others you know, be interested in participating in the Defrag Saturday session, connecting families, kids and students through digital media?

Yes 5

No 1

Maybe 14

 

#10. List you suggestions for improvements below. We appreciate your time and efforts.

 

 

➢ While the intent for conference was good, sessions were not well organized or maintained; sessions ran over, there appeared not to be one general 'host' to help drive the timing and setup of speakers. Didn't appear that there was good communication with speakers (as to where they were going to be, etc.) and it appeared as though there was too much scheduled over too long of a time (3) days which took away the 'splash' of the conference. I would suggest less conflicting sessions, maybe have 2 max at same time and really drive attendance. This was extremely poorly attended. Some sessions had no attendees while others had a dismal turnout. The panel discussion - while intent was good - left me puzzled as to why you had the four speakers...I got Bruce P. and Ed M. but the other two really did not fit and felt that this was a distraction to the entire session. It kept session from truly being as valuable as it could have been and some of the consensus was feeling sorry for such a presence in having someone like Bruce P. - he looked confused as to where he was supposed to be and i felt the topic misleading given the other two up there.

➢ I think there are opportunities to improve the outreach by clarifying the message as well as the groups that are targeted. Message: I heard two themes: 1. tools, techniques, technology to empower people to better interact with groups of people for the purposes of social change, artistic creation, selling a product, or job search. 2. provide platform to identify and prioritize issues, and mobilize people to address them. The second goal was not stated and at the end of the event some people felt we should have made more progress on that objective. Groups: I think people that attended in the past can be your best advocates. Attendees should be asked about groups they come in contact with that should attend. In my case, I didn't think to encourage my digital photography group or PC Users Group members to attend. I'm involved in several other groups that would probably have an interest. Attendance from more young people (college students and recent grads) would be good. Perhaps students could be copresenters. Consider reaching out to the Cleveland Bridgebuilders class and alumni. I also think some of the community technology efforts would be a nice addition. Those are just a few thoughts.

➢ Having concurrent events in line of sight from each other is good--it helps you not miss things that are happening, and encourages moving between sessions.

➢ i think it needs to be a one-day event

➢ Thank you for the survey. I commend your continued efforts moving Defrag forward. Just a few comments: 1. Limit conference to 2 days 2. Develop a concensus on most desired topics 3. Enhance marketing and promotion to improve attendance (use video footage and "should have been there" testimonials from this conference) 4. Look closely at schedule dates to avoid other major event conflicts (especially in July!) 5. Provide fish or vegetarian meal choices!

➢ With small number of attendees, simultaneous sessions are a mistake. Please schedule all participanants for 20 minutes maximum apiece all in the same space and then let everybody see everybody, that is the best way to learn what is being done and get exposed to connections and ideas that we might not have otherwise thought were of interest. Nobody needs more than 20 minutes to tell their story, this is the norm for academic conferences and should be a constraint everybody can work with.

➢ My greatest disappointment in the conference was the lack of local participation -- very few Lorain County participants. Please stress local publicity.

 

>Defrag Ohio takeaways

http://www.jeffschuler.net/archive/2007/04/defrag-ohio-1day-tak.html

 

Apr 24, 2007 - 21:31

Categories: cleveland, openSource

 

It's too bad more folks didn't attend Defrag Ohio ("Linking Ohio's Rich Media Resources and Renegades") two weeks ago -- some excellent stuff going on there.

 

I took that Friday off work and bicycled out to Lorain Community College for the second day of the conference. Very pleased to have gone; heard some inform/inspir-ational presentations and panels, got to meet some greats (like social networking guru Valdis Krebs, a few from The Institute For Open Economic Networks, and multi-faceted Susan Miller,) and enjoyed my rides out and back, despite the wind-tunnel I strained against, and the sickly suburban sprawl further out.

 

Here are a few take-aways and thoughts from the sessions I attended:

 

Advancing Education, Research and Economic Development in Renewable Energy: Bill Spratley, (Green Energy Ohio (GEO)), Blake Andres (Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC)):

 

* American Solar Energy Society and GEO are holding the SOLAR 2007 conference in Cleveland July 7th-12th. All-day the 8th is free and open to the public. (See who's going (and show your interest) on Upcoming.)

* The GLSC is installing a solar array to complement the new wind turbine.

* Ohio is host to 30 of the 50 most polluting coal plants in the US.

* thought: The Science Center has the resources and positioning to transform itself into a center for community discourse around renewable energy and emerging green tech, instead of being just a showcase.

 

Open Source Meets Open Source Economic Development: Bruce Perens (Sourcelabs), Ed Morrison (iOpen), Valdis Krebs (Orgnet.com), George Nemeth (MeetTheBloggers):

 

* Your organization will monetize and find success it its differentiation. Open-source (or use open source for) the non-differentiating aspects.

 

Research: 20 Years of Social Network Analysis: Valdis Krebs (Orgnet.com):

 

* Social connectedness within an organization correlates to commitment to that organization.

* Innovation happens at network intersections.

* Who needs to be introduced to whom? For example: A good bridge in a network can become a bottleneck if too much traffic must pass through them. Directly connect the people between which this bridge is the only connection.

* thought: With many web organizations opening up their data (web 2.0 companiess with open APIs, Google Groups, open source project revision control systems, etc.), there's opportunity for (low-cost) large-scale analysis.

* thought: Orgnet's InFlow software could be amazingly useful in re-defining how we understand and view social interaction on all sorts of levels, if made more accessible and extendable. Orgnet's no longer alone in the industry; the field is growing and other solutions are emerging. I'd love to see InFlow open-sourced, or at least made to be web-based and extensible. Orgnet can monetize on differentiators of experience, expertise, and consultation, and allow the tool widespread use and evolution.

 

Strategic Doing: Open Source, Collaborative Leadership and Social Networks: Ed Morrison (iOpen)

 

* Everyone's got an idea or two about what needs to be done to strengthen the region. How do we aggregate these ideas and passions? The aggregates are the really important things, and, made material, will gain critical mass.

 

comments

 

Jeff,

Nice to meet you again in Lorain. Thanks for the link to my multifaceted blog entries. Today I have been working on spreading the word about lead poisoning in our schools, yesterday on the on research in the arts, Monday on phytoremediation on the newly bare lots in the city of Cleveland and water quality issues -- downspout disconnects. It is a multi-faceted world and dividing it in a Cartesian manner no longer works. Though it may be a big picture, we will all have to adjust our sights to see a bigger interconnected vision of our world. Networking is a start. Hope to see your comments on realneo someday soon... Hello to Jenita, too.

 

-- Susan Miller (April 26, 2007 10:52 AM)

 

> http://sheep.handturkeystudios.com/turkeys/defrag-conference-a-reflection/

Defrag Conference: A Reflection

April 19th, 2007 by Fweeb

 

So this past weekend had me just outside of Cleveland, Ohio for a conference called Defrag. The stated purpose of Defrag is increasing Ohio’s involvement in “rich media” with an explicit focus on education and workforce development. And boy, they weren’t kidding. These people are serious, and great to talk to. I was there to talk about the Red Hat High program and also to give a short demo workshop on Blender. The Red Hat High presentation drew a limited, but engaging audience (there should eventually be a web video of this at some point, I think). The Blender workshop, which was part of a larger presentation on video game creation with Ted Jordan of Funutation and Steve Simmons of EDR Media, had an even more involved and diverse audience; presentations like that are always fun.

 

But I got a lot more out of this conference than just the ability to go on my little public displays of hyperactivity. I got to see a number of very interesting presentations by other people on a variety of cool topics. Some of the standouts for me were some of the presentations on educational game development and the presentations on open source (both the concept and the software). As part of the latter, I had the pleasure of being able to meet and briefly talk with Bruce Perens. For those of you who don’t know, he’s been involved with free and open source software from very nearly the beginning. We have a couple different perspectives on some topics, but by and large, I agree with him more often than I disagree.

 

And the presentations weren’t even the meat of what made this conference so enjoyable. The time between presentations and after the conference that was spent having discussions and tossing ideas around with other attendees was undeniably the best part of it all. Though most of the people there were from Ohio, and particularly that northeast region of the state, the attendance list for this thing ran the gamut. Because of this, I had a number stimulating conversations, and even the ones in which I could only play “fly on the wall” were quite informative.

 

Of course, being a young conference in its second quarterly meeting ever, there do seem to be some growing pains. In particular, one of the things that seems to be missing is a singular, cohesive vision that everyone can get behind. The conference’s website serves as a good example of what I’m talking about. There’s a lot of great information there, but some of it is difficult to find because of a flat organizational structure that doesn’t lend itself to easy navigation. A large part of the discussion of this conference was the concept of “Open Source Economic Development”. It’s true that in software, a large component of the open source development model is the “scratching of an itch”: individuals pursuing their personal interests. However, even small projects benefit from some form of organizational hierarchy when there are more than a few people involved. There’s an agreed unifying goal for the group and each person pursues their individual tasks relative to that goal, often developing sub-teams to quickly take care of low-hanging fruit. Now, to their credit, the conference is heading in that direction, so things look very promising for the folks at Defrag. It should be interesting to see how these things develop.

 

Anyhow, I had a great time there and I definitely look forward to the possibility of attending their next conference in July (assuming my schedule and finances hold up ;).

 

be cognizant of Bloggapalooza and of Ingenuity in scheduling the next event in Youngstown--you may have way too much competition to be inclusive of those you need to include--also, this is the second one you will schedule when students are not in session, so you might totally consider moving this one to the fall--you need to re-think the need to adhere rigidly and blindly to the idea of "quarterly"--it may not be necessary, and it may actually be very wrong-headed

 

Thank you to the committee---folks at I-Open for leading the charge. Be encouraged that your work is not in vain.