A good set of points and observations. And thank you for 17, that’s very nice of you.

We have managed to “bag” a chief exec in the West Midlands – Jan Britton from Sandwell has come to a few of our events, including the HyperWM unconference, and was the most prolific social reporter at the Innovation and Efficiency West Midlands conference where Ken Eastwood and Peter Jackson convinced the organisers to throw open the afternoon to an unconference.

One of the things he brings is the sort of challenge that many of us have been saying we could do with to break down that “comfortable clique” feel.

As for 11, I think that smaller Teacamps, Brewcamps and the like do go a little way towards maintaining the discussion in between bar camps. Apart from that, well a lot of people spend that time trying to sneak this stuff into their day jobs, I suppose ;0)

Thanks for the interesting post
Simon

Just been reviewing your presentation content here – very good and quite engaging. One suggestion – might want to update them to 2012 events and landscape (messages still valid) but images of Bliar, Brown and Straw might be construed as being associated with “stale” content – which it is not. Big Society instead of “Big conversation” ah plagiarism, don’t you just admire the cheek of it

Looking forward to meeting you and your colleagues.

Regards,
Patrick.

Though I think Taibbi overdoes the corporate backing; once you get down to two candidates, they’re always going to be backed by major interests, so I tend to think the money follows interest; it’s a proxy for proximity to power. That said, he’s on the money about how corporate money goes predominantly to 1% comfortable candidates, which is a major influence on who gets nominations. I’d be interested to see the corporate backing for Obama as a time-series, as his candidacy began as an insurgency – at least rhetorically – but at some stage, major firms became intensely relaxed about his candidacy, and it’s be intriguing to know when.