I had hoped to do a Rebecca and blog the heck out of Interactions'08, but the fact is, there came a point where all I could do was sit back and let it wash over me. With eight sessions a day for two days straight, there was a lot to think about, and a lot to take notes on.
Plus, as it turns out, the whole thing is going to be available online as streaming Flash movies anyhow. The TED talks have really, I think, changed the game in terms of how a conference's knowledge can live on as a continuing provocation/education and publicity for what the conference does. It will also, I'm sure, change the game for conference speakers -- in the same way that John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has admitted to being super-aware that he can no longer reuse a joke onstage without someone in the audience having already heard a bootleg of the first time he told it, streaming video will make regular conference speakers break out of their practiced shtick or risk seeming like hacks. (How you balance the need to build on earlier thought with the demand for novelty is the next problem, I guess.)
So for now I'll just congratulate the tireless Dave Malouf, Dan Saffer, Josh Seiden, Liz Bacon, my colleague Robert Reisman, and the rest of the IxDA board, the volunteers, and the faculty and staff at SCAD for a truly extraordinary conference experience. The quality of the dialogue, the intensity of the energy, and experience of the place were all extraordinary. I am so honored to have been a part of this first-ever conference for interaction designers, and I can't wait for 2009.
(If you can't wait for the movies to be online later this week, or don't have 20 minutes to spare to see me race through my deck, Core77 did a bite-sized writeup of my talk and a few other talks as well.)