IP Democracy: More on Mesh and Boxers versus Briefs

As I mentioned yesterday, mesh, “Canada’s Web Conference,” was terrifically fun. I couldn’t stay for the full two days, much to my regret, but Day One was filled with interesting panels, including the opening interview with Mike Arrington.

Two other observations. First, for whatever reason, Canada, despite its very high broadband penetration, is about 18 months behind the U.S. in the development and adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and advanced Internet applications. Or at least that’s what the mostly Canadian group of attendees had to say.

Perhaps that’s why mesh is such a big success and why the attendees seemed to me unusually eager to gain knowledge and solicit advice.

Secondly, either by design or happenstance (and I tend to think the former is true), everybody at mesh was very bright and, even better, fun-loving. Although the panel discussions were serious, the atmosphere was relaxed and enjoyable, right down to the speaker gifts. Loren Feldman posted a video of Mike Arrington showing off the…underwear that the male speakers received.

The female speakers also received underwear as a speaker gift, but for some reason the mesh organizers decided to give women briefs (not boy briefs, but regular men’s briefs) as their speaker gifts. Male speakers got boxers. (Both were supplied by promotional premium company Right Sleeve Marketing, and the underwear is definitely giving Right Sleeve a promotional lift.)

If only all tech, Internet and media conferences could be run with the same sense of humor, we’d all become even more conference-crazy that we already are.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 1, 2007 10:43 AM to IP Democracy