It’s been announced that the 8th Infonortics Virtual Communities conference, originally scheduled for November 2005, has been cancelled. It’s a real shame. The conference has always drawn some pretty high caliber speakers from around the world and, most years at least, was full new ideas, practical tips for practitioners and lots of other useful "takeaways" as they call them on the conference scene.
Cliff Figallo and Jenny Preece, who’ve both published books about the art of building online communities, have been speakers. Bill Thompson turned up one year and Tom Coates gave a presentation in 2002. Joe Cothrel, Miranda Mowbray and Dawn Yankeelov each always had something interesting to say. Nancy White (who is also "bummed" about this news) and Will Davies both dropped in to the conference in 2004 and challenged us to think a little bit differently about online community.
So has anyone heard of any other good conferences in the UK? (and if you’re organising a conference email me the details and I’ll put a blurb up here)
I think it’s time to take this into our hands and declare/create/catalyze and Open Space on Online Community. Or maybe one in Europe, one or two in North America, one in Asia, South America and one in Africa. Someone, give me a round the world ticket and I’ll help organize it for the cost of travel and a decent supply of chocolate!