Well, I’m back from Web Essen­tials, and pretty much caught up on all that missed sleep.

I could talk about all the cool, wierd, unbe­liev­able and down­right awe­some things that hap­pened all night — but for now I will limit myself to a few over­all impres­sions. There’s been plenty of dis­cus­sion around the blogs — and they’re all very easy to find thanks to Tech­no­rati — and while I’d like to com­ment on some of the things that have been said, if I wait until I’ve got it all straight in my head it will be WE06 before I post any­thing. Whew!

One thing that I have notices is that some peo­ple have a dif­fer­ent idea as to what to expect from a con­fer­ence like WE05. For me, it’s about being ener­gized and inspired by the com­mu­nity and the lead­ers of that com­mu­nity, learn­ing about ideas and trends rather than spe­cific tech­niques. Tech­niques I can learn from blogs and user groups. Ideas and inspi­ra­tion are a lit­tle harder to come by. The inter­na­tional speak­ers — the super­stars like Molly, Jeff, Eric, Tan­tek, Doug, Derek and Kelly — cer­tainly pro­vided all that inspi­ra­tion and more. My fel­low Port80ians Miles, Adrian, Nick and Kara made it all that much bet­ter — providers of break­fast con­ver­sa­tion, sight­see­ing and shop­ping com­pan­ions, and of course drink­ing mates. Go Perth!

So to sum­marise, I had a great time, got to hang out with my idols and my bud­dies, met some amaz­ing peo­ple and stocked up on vision and inspi­ra­tion. Can’t wait for next year.

Tech­no­rati: WE05