A lot of things were improved at Etech this year… particularly the logistics. The rooms were properly sized for sessions and much more accessible (no more gigantic geek gridlock between activities), the wireless was pretty much rock-solid, and there was adequate power available. But there is a lot of room for improvement.

As far as facilities go, an immediate and useful improvement would be to have spaces set aside with power and long tables for people to just gather and mingle. Almost everyone will agree that the best part of these conferences are the people you meet, and that often stems from backchannel, twitter, and other online interactions– providing space(s) to facilitate those meetings would be great.

More importantly, the presentations could be handled a lot better. I understand why a conference like this can’t go un-conference… I think that format is best for smaller, more intimate gatherings. But given that the presentation format remains the same (a long bit of presentation only then some Q&A), why not require that all the presenters make the presentation part of their sessions available a few weeks ahead of time online? Then the sessions themselves could be much more interactive– more like BOF discussions than presentations. I don’t need to fly thousands of miles to watch a narrated slideshow… give me that information in advance, then let’s get down to the business of talking about the ideas and material. That’s where the good stuff is. It’s very rare to want the Q&A part to end– it’s always too short, while the presentation section can seem endless. This would have the welcome side effect of ensuring that the promise of “I’ll make my slides available soon” comes to fruition.

This would also allow more time for those sessions where the presentation value is heightened either through the experience (watching the mathemagician live is a must) or through interactive presentation content (debates, panel discussions, group activities, etc).

Selection of speakers is also something that needs to be reconsidered. Putting together a conference of this size is difficult, and kudos to Rael and others for all the work they out into making sure Etech is a good experience. But there is just something wrong when the topic of the conference evolves– or even changes radically– and the speaker list remains 75% (maybe more) the same. It would be like holding a conference on networking and then one on gaming and having the same list of speakers.

A lot of innovation happens on the edge, and the edge is hard to reach, but that should be where Etech organizers really extend their search. The whole concept of focusing on “emerging” technology is problematic because there isn’t necessarily a gigantic amount of obvious, discontinuous, innovation happening every 12 calendar months. So in addition to reaching to the edge, don’t be afraid to follow up on past topics more closely. This doesn’t mean the same people, but the ideas. Last year, with the topic of “The Attention Economy” the way was paved to follow up with more cognitive and neural science, for instance, but instead we got abstractions about those fields from people who are not necessarily specialists. It’s the cyclical nature of emergence that people create something new and then what they have created is picked up by others, not just themselves.

On a very personal level, the representation of the educational technology sector was at an all time high and I think it might be time to recognize that the education area is an ever more important domain for technological happenings, particularly given the growth of participatory culture and youth-dominated social networks.

I always get a lot out of Etech, so these are not really complaints. But as technology evolves, so should the conference itself!