#AdobeSummit Takeaways: My Regrets

I’ve written several posts with different reflections on my Adobe Summit 2013 experience. You can see a list of all of them by going to my Adobe Summit tag.

Just like the old adage that, if a vacation doesn’t end before you wish it did, then you stayed too long, one of my measures for a conference is how many thinks I didn’t get to do that I wish I had.

In the case of Summit, I had a pretty healthy list:

• I didn’t get to see more of Adobe Social — Adobe has been all sorts of crazy hard at work on the product, and the glimpses I caught in keynotes show that there’s a lot going on with it.
• I missed Unsummit — the unaffiliated, peer-driven conference on Tuesday. I didn’t actually know about Unsummit, which, I think, is pretty common with first-timers.
• Microsoft Surface — Tuesday night, I had a conversation with some guys from MSN who indicated they all had Surfaces. I’ve never actually seen one up close, so I was fully expecting that I’d bump into one of those guys later in the conference and get a look. That’s not really related to analytics, but it’s a gadgethead’s regret.

Then, there was a list of people I regret not getting to hang out with or not getting to hang out with more:

• Carmen Sutter – Carmen is one of the Adobe Social product managers who I met last fall shortly before she dived into that role. I got to see and meet a lot of people, but I really racked up the near misses with Carmen. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t actively avoiding me.
• Ben Gaines – Ben’s an Adobe Analytics product manager, and I did manage to chat with him on Tuesday night for a bit, attend his “Sitecatalyst Tips” breakout, and swap a number of tweets. But, still, you really can’t get enough of Ben, and we didn’t get enough time to solve the world’s problems. I’ll just have to lobby to get him to Columbus for our April Web Analytics Wednesday. Cross your fingers if you’re in Columbus.
• Gregory Ng — Chief Strategy Officer for Brooks Bell and guy-who-never-sleeps-as-he-pursues-a-gazillion-quirky-side-interests. We chatted for a bit at the welcoming reception and then failed to connect again. That’s one of the things about Summit — you get 10 minutes with a person and say, “Let’s catch up later,”…and then the conference is over!
• Jason Thompson — even worse than Greg, I saw Jason right as I arrived at the hotel on Wednesday evening…and never saw him again (excluding tweets). Curses!

The list of things I don’t regret is wayyyyy longer — I saw some neat things, learned some good stuff, and got to hang out with some great people!