Best wishes for all your endeavors. Hopefully I’ll make a trip over there soon to see you and the UK-Flex peeps. If the exchange rate wasn’t such a death blow I’d consider living part time in the UK.

I think next time with no OnAir Tour conflict, a bigger pushback from us to speakers for deeper topics and a venue closer to the European Flex hotspots (Benelux, UK), things will pick up to “expected” 360|Flex levels.

Funny lil tidbit though, you only experienced 360|Flex ‘07 in San Jose. A lot of our speakers skipped Seattle because they felt that San Jose 07 was “too light” on tech topics, “too markety” of an event and all around not that good. By default, our constant desire for improvements seem to smooth out these kinda “less desirables” by Seattle and we were rolling full steam by Atlanta.

We’ll definitely be working hard behind the scenes to bridge the gap between the 2 Euro shows. The good thing is that the community will have one more year to grow and become more tech savvy with Flex. This will benefit our attendees as there will be more hard core Flex geeks in the speaker pool.

I know you won’t be first in line to buy, but I’m hoping 360|Flex Euro ‘09 will be good enough to entice you back.

Thanks again for the reviews.

Quickly though, the two biggest problems, in my mind, with 360|Flex Europe were marketing and time.

We just assumed that our brand would carry across and that we would line up the technical speakers and attendees. Talking to folks who did show up, they found us by accident more so than by knowing the brand. We had a solution to that problem in mind, but that leads us to the second problem: time.

Time is an issue in general, since John and I do these shows part time. We’ve now realized that doing 2 shows in 1 quarter is not possible on a part time basis. 360|Flex Europe ‘09 will be in a quarter on it’s own, to get the planning and attention it rightly deserves. (John will hate me for saying this next bit, but oh well) I’m also hoping that John can go full time with 360Conferences soon. I think having one dedicated person on the shows will be a huge boost to details and organization overall.

That being said, despite the “poor showing”, our first European was a valuable learning experience for John and I. We hear all of your concerns and have a few you weren’t aware of (that I’ll still discuss). I’ll add another comment with the links to these various writeups I have in the works when I’m done.

One thing we’re known for in the States is continuous improvement, show after show. Don’t think this won’t be applied to Europe as well. We’ll have to dust ourselves off a bit, but we’ll be back. With more knowledge and a better understanding of the European community. Hopefully, we’ll get more write ups like this that lay out where we can improve, so we can follow up on them and improve.

Thanks again for the review. Sorry we disappointed, but we’ll do our best next time to give you the experience you’ve grown to expect from the 360|Flex brand.

I think the recipe for success that the 360Flex conference has for the US may not translate into success in Europe. It wouldn’t be the first time that we Americans didn’t get you Europeans.

I’m bummed that you won’t be back at 360Flex in SanJo. Like you, I was the first person to purchase a ticket – after they announced. I’m going to have to make it to Flash on the Beach one of these years so that we can hook up.

Lost your email address (long story). So, would you be up for a drink Friday night instead? Mark Drew may be coming along, and I’ll have a friend whose pad I’m crashing at, but if you’re on for a drink in central London, email me and we’ll sort out the details – would be great to hang out!