Reflection so far

The conference has had a huge range of speakers. When I first looked at the program I thought 'wow! how on earth am I going to get to everything I want.' But in looking more carefully at the abstracts and papers, it became clearer. Being able to pick and choose is a little like using RSS to pick and choose. Some conferences give a limited choice of sessions whereas through this one I've almost been able to make my own program of interest to me :-)
In looking around the session I'm in at the moment (bad choice of session I'll confess) a lot of people are just sitting listening. Few are taking notes. This has been a pattern in the other sessions as well. As I was tapping away on my Palm keyboard yesterday I was taking notes and also commenting on what I was hearing. Last year while I was doing my Flexible Learning Leader project I was fortunate to attend several conferences/seminars/ forums and found that I got the most out of the sessions where I was using this kind of process. It is a mixture of consumption and production.
Something interesting must have just happened in the session because an audience member interrupted and the tone of voices just got fierce! Goodness knows what.

A looming theme from the conference is about the socio-cultural aspects of the workplace, the relationships and tensions that exist in the workplace, the nature of knowledge and the artefacts that exist. Through taking a step back from the workplace and looking from the outside in, the events and contexts of the workplace are treated in terms of organisational development and sociological theory. The few sessions so far that draw on casestudies and the details of those case studies are discussed have captured my attention the most. Tracey Lee, Kati Tikkimatta(?), Geof Hawke and Bente Noorgaard have talked more about the actual practice than most sessions.
The conference sessions are structured around a shortish talk (20 mins) then some time for Q&A in which the audience can draw on threads they found contentious, interesting or thought provoking. This has worked really well - because there are so many sessions the audience size is small and allows for some good dialogue.