I have to say, it's all gone better than I might have hoped for. The main conference content went live exactly on schedule at 10am Dallas time (the originally planned venue) with Stephen Kelly's keynote and continued through live discussion panels covering business and development topics. In addition to the panels, the conference on-demand content was completed with the posting of customer and analyst videos - some fantastic stories which I'll cover in other postings.

The platform worked flawlessly, streaming the video, live audio, question streams and chat rooms. Let's hope that continues for the next few days.

Hundreds of attendees took part and the live chat sessions were very busy running in parallel to the content - that kind of "talking in class" wouldn't really be acceptable during a physical event - an example of something that can only be done "virtually" perhaps? (Is this an example of augmented reality?)

Can a virtual conference really take the place of a live event? Well in many ways it's better - more participation, more interactivity, content that can be re-viewed and re-used, delivered when it suits the attendee rather than the presenter, and much more. However there are some things that perhaps can't be done on-line - face to face chats are often the best form of communication. But overall, it seems to be a pretty good alternative.

Actually, there is one aspect of the physical conference we can't quite replicate - the late night solving of problems over a beer (or several!). Perhaps that's not such a bad thing - my liver will be happy at least!