To Everyone I Met in Buffalo:
I'm sorry that I felt the need to head back early today, but with next week being the end of the year at my university I just had to get back.
I really enjoyed the conversations I had with many of you over this brief time and especially want to thank people for the feedback I received on my Cross-Cultural Video Project - which I had never presented publicly in the US before Saturday.
I also wanted to add one comment in regard to the conference structure, although this may very well be something that you are discussing at this very moment! If there were a way to plug me into a chat now, I could even continue to participate!
Well, I would like to express some frustration that we were not able to progress further in collaboratively designing a structure for the gathering that would have lent itself more directly to cooperation. I think that if we were to have met together as one group, initially, and then determined as a group how we would break out, there might have been a more organic development of our ideas and the sessions could have grown from these interactions. Of course, there are many good reasons why this is approach also somewhat impractical - but I think the risk that things could have become more chaotic by emphasizing a group organizational process would have been worth taking.
Thanks for making this happen,
Jon Rubin