If you’re a gamer, you’re familiar with earning “XP” (experience points). If you’re not familiar with it, your kids are probably staring at you right now and wondering why you’re so weird. Basically, you accrue XP by playing a game over time – and that XP is good for boosting the benefits associated with your character.
Next year is Defrag’s 5th year in existence. And I’m already dreaming up the special things we’re gonna do to commemorate it.
One of the things I’m going to do is figure out ways for people to earn “Defrag XP” — where by doing so, you’ll get invited to/access to some special activities at next year’s defrag. Like what? Oh, I dunno — our super-top secret golf outing the day before the show, or a very small dinner with some of our bigger keynote names, or an invite-only thing here, or a special discount there.
The only question is *how* do you earn Defrag XP. Well, I know of one way — attend the events we throw.
If you’ve been to other past Defrag’s, you’ve already earned some tremendous XP. We have some people that have been to every single Defrag (BIG XP). Hell, we have some people (John Minnihan, I’m looking at you!) who have been to every Defrag and every Glue (MASSIVE XP). Come to think of it, we even have some people (Ed Costell0), who have been to every Defrag, every Glue, and are already registered for Blur (we’re talking Overlord of Events XP).
Dave Fauth (another guy that’s got some good XP built up) has this to say about Defrag:
Defrag 2010 will be my third Defrag event. I attend because Defrag is a community of brilliant people who come together to think and be challenged about cutting-edge, large scale problems that aren’t normally discussed in a technical conference.Defrag breaks through your normal echo-chamber of thinking and stretches you to think in open, innovative and ways. The relationships I’ve made over the past three years continue to pay dividends as I come across new challenges in my day-to-day work. I look forward to catching up with those relationships and making new ones at Defrag.
So, what do you need to do to earn XP and begin accruing benefits for Defrag’s 5th anniversary party (even if you’ve never been to a Defrag before)? Start by attending this year. After that, look for messages, tweets and ideas from me that allow you to earn more. Then, when year 5 of Defrag hits — you’ll totally have the conference experience pwnd.
