So far, no conference has beaten Reboot for the amount of inspiring people I listened to and met. For a fantasy conference, who would you have give a talk? Doesn’t have to be tech people.
My wants:
For me I’ve love to see Ewan McIntosh being brought over and giving a talk to the people in charge of the education system in Ireland. Ewan has some great ideas for using technology to engage the bored kids in schools.
Tara Hunt. Citizen Agency and so much more.
Steven Johnson. He wrote Emergence. He’s a genius and he’s also behind Outside.in
I finally met JP Rangaswami in person last week and he’s more magnetic when you meet him. Very engaging and very charming. Would love to see him talk to an Irish crowd. Might ask BT Ireland to invite him over. 🙂
I’d love to see Shel Israel back in these parts but not as such to give a talk but to have a conversation about, well him really. Mr. Naked Conversations has some great stories to tell.
Russell Davies. No T. The guy that amongst other things runs the Interesting conference.
Fred Wilson. I never thought I’d be reading the blog of a venture capitalist and actually be excited about seeing new content arrive in my feedreader every day. If he came over I’d actually like to see him talk about music more than the business he’s in.
Who’s your want list?
Update: Funnily enough I’m subbed to everyone bar Murch and Kos.
Arrington is fantastic Damien, have heard him twice now and really enjoyed him both times, other than that I like Loic as well
Is there an event coming up? I don’t know who any of these people are besides Tara Hunt and Shel Israel. (And Michael Arrington, was disappointed I missed him at FOWA in London because he was on too early). How many blogs are you subscribed to Damien?
Ah wait, turns out I’m actually subscribed to JP Rangaswami’s blog too – never knew that was his name 🙂
220 blogs/feeds
Caterina Fake. After TC40 I’m in love with that woman.
Jyri Engeström from Jaiku
Ken Thompson from Swarmteams
Fred Wilson X 1000
Try Billy Glennon of Vision and see if you can get him also to rope in
Fernando Flores
http://www.vision.com/company/people/billy_glennon.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Flores
Also Dave Winer.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Seth Godin
Dermot
I would love to come back. I feel a special kinship with Ireland, particularly Cork, maybe because I prefer Murphy’s to Guinness. I also prefer a conversation to a monologue, so that format would be fun.
All the speakers you mentioned are great. I think what Ewan has to say is really valuable. Arrington is first rate and charismatic as Hell. You might add Anil Dash and Jeremiah Owyang to your list of top speakers. Loic is always a great performance.
I’d love to come to Ireland. I’ve spoken to some edtech people before, but not the policymakers and decision takers. I’ve also just met JP at the RSA last week (were you there, too?!) and think Shel is full of insights – wonderful in small roundtable type discussions.
I’ll be Ewan’s Irish runner if he wants special care and feeding in Ireland.
Danah Boyd. Saw her at Les Web 3.0 last year. Excellent on Social Networks. See her on the apophenia blog.
Chris Horn is pretty good on stage, but he doesn’t really do the conference circuit.
Larry Wall and Guido Van Rossum are my two favourite uber geeks, would love to see them do talks. (Perl and Python are my two fav languages).
Clay Shirky writes the best stuff about Social networks, I’d just like to meet him, but I bet his talks rock.
Zack Exley, given the stage the US election is reaching – and how fundraising is different this time to last
Lego CEO
http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay/2007/10/lego-ceo—pres.html
and Seth Godin.