Defrag 2011 wrapped on Thursday.

As in other years, I was happy to be engaged by interesting thinkers, both on stage and in the audience.  Interesting conversations are easily found at Defrag.

Reflecting on the speakers though, here are a few of my personal highlights from the two day affair:

• I loved James Altucher’s irreverent approach and contrarian thinking.  He laid out how we’ve been giving corporations tacit permission to lie to us via marketing, as long as it entertains us.  They lie to us, and we expect them to lie to us.  However, he’s found great success by simply being honest and direct and implored us to do the same.  Check out his blog, you’ll enjoy it.
• Opening by playing Zork live on stage to show us the “This space intentionally left blank” message from an inside wall of the house, Paul Kedrosky, really Ctrl-Alt-Deleted our brains by illuminating the fact that we are awash in data – from twitter, emails, etc. and by being constantly connected.  That we always have this background noise of happenings, and that we get comfort from knowing that we aren’t missing something.  Noise is proof that we are alive.  Silence and blankness remind us of death.  Our fear drives us out of our way not to have blankness (e.g.  “This page has been intentionally left blank.”)  He noted that blankness is nothing to fear, and in today’s age perhaps should be embraced more than ever.
• Sam Arbesman of the Kauffman foundation brought the word mesofact into my vocabulary:  A mesofact is a fact that is slowly evolving over time.  This could be because knowledge about it grows or because previous knowledge has been overturned.  Or, is that really the same thing?  Hmm.
• Duncan Watts of the Yahoo! Research Group explained how rocket science is in fact pretty easy when compared to trying to understand human behavior problems.  He’s done some fascinating research about how we often shouldn’t rely on our common sense and why.  But without intuition working for us, what do we do?  He outlines several solutions in his new book “Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer“
• Adrian Cockcroft provided fantastic insight into how Netflix created and maintains a high performance culture.  I’ve heard Reed Hastings speak before at the Liberty Media NetLeaders Forum and was struck by several out of the ordinary ways that Netflix is operated, and Adrian backed this up.  He spent most of his time telling us what Netflix doesn’t do – policies that stifle innovation:  don’t acquire other companies, don’t high junior staff, don’t impose coding standards, don’t have a monolithic IT department, don’t hire brilliant jerks, etc.  As even he pointed out, it’s probably not possible for large companies to morph themselves into an innovative culture, but start-up companies can take these lessens and not lose their innovation edge.
• T.A. McCann walked us through the interesting tale of Gist from its beginning to the eventual sale to RIM.  I loved hearing how they found their way to success.  Their story is inspiring.
• In Brad Feld’s keynote “Resistance is Futile:  The Rise of the Machines” he scares the bejesus out of you by showing how machines will ultimately win.  They don’t have to kill you, just be patient and let you die.  He describes how dual developments are racing toward the same end:  humans being transformed by machines, and machines being anthropomorphized.  Ultimately we will become one.  Relax though.  He doesn’t foresee a post apocalyptic man vs. machine war, but instead a symbiotic and positive future.  Showing these exponential trajectories, he challenged us to think 20 years out to a time within our lifespans that will be markedly different than today.
• Lastly, Jordan Kretchmer bucks the common wisdom of pivoting early and often, describing many scenarios where it simply doesn’t make sense and why.  Vision is everything.  Don’t compromise it in the face of obstacles.  “Saddle up and fix it!”

These eight speakers weren’t the only ones to challenge our thinking.  Most all provided new insights to the audience.

Year in and year out, Defrag can be relied upon to impart to you a new idea, a new way of thinking, a serendipitous professional contact, and just plain fun.

I literally took over 15 pages of notes because I didn’t want to miss something that will be vital to my professional career or the development of my new start-up.

Kim and Eric, congrats on 5 years of success.  I’m already looking forward to Glue and Defrag next year.