The latest ERE Expo is over, and the reviews are starting to come in.

Here are a few of my thoughts from the show:

• It's been said before, but can never reall be said too many times.  Networking, networking, networking is where some of the most valuable and unvarnished information gets passed along at these conferences, and it's why the ERE Expo gets more valuable as it gets bigger.  As a company, it is our challenge to make sure that the events don't lose their intimate feel as they get larger.
  

• Twitter was one of the experiments that we tried this time around as a tool to make the show more personal, the feedback more immediate, and to foster more personal connections.  I was pleasantly surprised.  We created the ereexpo Twitter account a week before the conference and by the end of the show over a hundred people became followers. That's a small fraction of the attendees, but I think that those that did sign up added a new level to how they experienced the event.  Also, I think that those that did not try Twitter themselves benefitted from the people who did, because we posted their thoughts on screen in front of the entire audience in real time.

• Even better, there were recruiters who could not make it to the Expo that were able to get a sense of what was going on in real time because of Twitter.  It felt like Shannon and Amybeth were there in person!

• This was a breakout year for video at the Expo.  We encourage attendees and Bloggers to bring their cameras and post videos online.  This year, we even had five cameras of own that we let people borrow.  There were people with cameras running around everywhere and you can see some pretty cool stuff here and here.

• The poker game was a huge success - it raised over $13,000 for the ERE Foundation.  Thanks for coordinating everything and getting the word out Jason!

• The. ERE. Team. Rocks.  We operate virtually so we don't see each other face to face very often.  When we do, I feel like there is pretty much nothing we can't take on.

• I had three people come up to me during the conference and tell me what a huge difference ERE has made in their professional lives.  We're at the point now where there are some people for whom we have been the primary way that they have gotten their professional educationfor their entire careers, and that's pretty damn cool.
  

Good times.