Example: Everyone got a t-shirt, or was supposed to. Some people didn’t know about the shirts and didn’t wait to receive theirs when they signed in, so they might have felt excluded. The shirts were color-coded, but all were labeled “Rockstar” in keeping with a core PodCamp philosophy that everyone is a rockstar. Yet, we did want the VIPs to feel a little different, because they contributed money to make the event happen. And we wanted organizers to be identifiable so people knew whom to ask questions of, and I suppose some people could be intimidated by a group of yellow-shirt-wearing people.

So, although we wanted everyone to have the benefit of a shirt and we wanted to use the shirts in other positive ways as well, sometimes things don’t work out as expected. Given the chance to do it over, I’d do the same thing but use the opening keynote and closing keynote to talk about the “everyone is a rockstar” concept a bit, and point it out on the shirts we all received.

Each year we make a few things better. Each year we learn what we could have done. It’ll never be perfect, and that’s OK too. At least folks came and were exposed to the opportunities and possibilities of social media.