Anyone with audio or video from the conference, please post links here. It'd be nice to hear some of the talks and get a feel for the atmosphere there.
For a reference in case it's put on again in the future (and for any help it might be to Sean)... it was a small conference with a handful of booths and ~30-50 people there (I was only there for a few hours on Saturday), a good few with kids (kids were either allowed to roam around or kept in a smaller quarantine room). The conference didn't offer too much for young kids to do, though -- nothing terribly exciting, anyway. The talks were geared largely toward the beginner and occasionally intermediate crowd, or else were just philosophical. This was strange given the exhibition area was, charities and "causes" excluded, majority-geared toward intermediates and experts who'd be able to recognize what the people were actually doing. That said, I'm sure booth operators would have been willing to have a go at trying to explain.
It was a very calm, relaxed conference and things were on time. It lacked many of the big names and unfortunately, BitcoinTrader had a large center booth. Maybe Sean was being overly-polite or just figured the negatives would outweigh the positives, but it wasn't a terribly encouraging first sight. Charities and "causes" had a significant presence, including the likes of Ian Freeman of FSP (who managed to get me to sign a statement of intent), Stephanie Murphy of Fr33Aid (though I think she was there for LTB -- maybe both), Bitcoins Not Bombs (shirt's surprisingly comfortable and high-quality -- I almost never wear anything but a plaid overshirt with pants but wore it on the drive home), and BungeeBones. The setting had only a couple chairs and no place for informal sit-down meeting (excluding area outside the actual conference area). Though there was strong 4G coverage throughout the conference area, WiFi was apparently spotty in the exhibition area. I had slight difficulty paying some merchants and charities with cash when they didn't bring any kind of change, so I'd end up, say, giving them a $20 and then paying change in bitcoin, which was fine. Beverages were provided freely, but outside the actual lunch room, the conference wasn't large enough in physical size to accommodate refreshment merchants in the exhibition area or something along those lines (the hotel would probably prohibit it anyway). It was a casual atmosphere with only two suits I counted (and given gigavps was one of them...).
Booths were largely non-interactive and generally featured alpha or pre-alpha products (which isn't terribly useful to beginners, I'd guess), BitcoinOutlet being the major exception (which I was very pleased to see and impressed by, though it ended up taking me ~2h to actually get the coins I paid for). Overall, the small attendance and lack of employment or investment opportunities was a bit disappointing for how far out of my way I went, but it was an excellent conference for people looking for a relaxed setting to talk personally to booth operators without much crowding. It also had a good few smaller projects and operations I hadn't heard of but was very pleased to. OpenBazaar, for example, was an engaging and exciting booth to go to.
