After 11 sessions, bringing over 250 people interested in social media from all kinds of academic and business backgrounds together, we look back on a series of very inspiring meetings, that generated all kinds of spin-off and combinations of people collaborating.

When we, Lilia Efimova, Sebastian Fiedler, and Ton Zijlstra, started this in March 2004 it was a different environment. We felt the need to create a space for free format conversations between professionals around shared interest relating to social media. Then that type of space was scarce. Most conferences gave wall to wall death by powerpoint, leaving next to no room for real exchanges between participants. Informal meetings were just that, informal, leaving no room for any real exchanges around professional themes. We also felt the need to be able to meet those that we interacted with intensively on-line in a face to face setting.

The BlogWalk sessions served that purpose well. Our connections to eachother strengthened a lot. There are many BlogWalk participants I am in regular contact with, and there are a good number of them that I regard as colleagues and close professional peers.

The need we felt in 2004 however has been addressed, and the environment nowadays is different from back then. It seems that creating your own event, your own un-conference, has become more normal, and more accepted as a viable format for professional exchange and learning. I find, in fact, that a majority of the events I go to these days follow that free flowing format. Not quite a BlogWalk format though, as we aimed to really open the space up completely, with next to no structuring and programming beforehand. Free enough however to feel our needs from 2004 addressed. And it already showed in the frequency of the BlogWalk sessions in these past years. In 2006 and 2007 we only did one session. That is different from the 5 we did per year before that.

It was fun, it was inspiring, it was extremely valuable. I am glad we three had the chance of doing this in Enschede, Nuremberg, Vienna, London, Umea, Chicago, Mechelen, Sydney, Innsbruck, Seattle, Bonn and Amsterdam. (See a list of all BlogWalk salons) Now it’s time to let BlogWalk as an event go. I’m pretty sure we will keep meeting like this from now on, there is however no need to call it BlogWalk anymore. Even if we may do so every now and then.

Thanks to all of you who participated!

But don’t worry we’ll be looking to organize the 12th Salon as soon as we’re able to. This might mean early next year though. In the meantime do feel free to give us your suggestions for possible themes for the next BlogWalk, over at the programme page.

Of course there are all sorts of on-line traces which lets you reconstruct what went on at the BlogWalk meeting:

Postings on Technorati
Photos on Flickr

Lilia, Sebastian and I are already looking at the lessons learned this time, and how to apply them to our next meeting. BlogWalk 12 is scheduled to take place in the first half of October in Nuremberg.

After being kindly hosted at the University of Augsburg, before migrating to my own server under a subdomain of Interdependent.biz, BlogWalk now has its own definitive web-home at http://www.blogwalk.eu/

Of course older links to blogwalk.interdependent.biz still work, and will keep working in the future.

The people coming to this session hail from a variety of backgrounds, both researchers and practitioners, academics and business. I am very much looking forward to a day of great conversations.

Now on with finding a venue, and arranging the dinners on the night before and the day itself.

The tools they use?
How they learn and develop themselves?
How they support a highly mobile life style?
The organisational models and business models that fit these networked individuals?

As you see this is a broad subject that allows for enough space for wide ranging but deep conversations and dialogue.

Meanwhile the first wave of invitations have been sent out, and the first ten confirmations have been received. We are still looking for a venue in Amsterdam, but have several options under consideration.

Keep track of the Amsterdam BlogWalk event page, which links to relevant sub pages.

Sebastian, Lilia and I are looking forward to continuing our BlogWalk efforts, and are looking at a possible next BlogWalk event in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in the spring of 2007.