Last week, I had the distinct pleasure to speak at a conference I was thoroughly impressed by.

Let me be clear.

This is not always the case.

Sometimes, conferences dissappoint me. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Bad organizers, bad audiences, incorrect expectations on my part. Suffice it to say, there are a host of reasons that can lead to bad, ineffective, or minorly useless waste of time conferences. And then there are the reasons for good ones.

Here are some reason why the Social Media for Non-Profits Conference wow’d me.

(Times a million.)

1. The Line-Up: The line-up was great. Folks like Bryan Breckenridge, Evan Bailyn, and more came out and shined. Shined, I tell you. On stage, dressed well, bells on (literally and figuratively). There are times when you see speakers fired up, and times when you don’t. This was, well, the former. These speakers were inspired to be with passionate audience members who wanted to learn. And they shared the best of themselves.
2. The Organizers: The organizers were — well, incredible. Two people. Two incredibly smart, capable people. They rocked, they rolled. They are also engaged. Darian Rodriguez Heymen (with whom I share a treasured Argentine connection) and Ritu Sharma. Darian Rodriguez Heymen is the former Executive Director of the Craigslist Foundation, and recently wrote the new Nonprofit Management 101 (which I’m currently devouring).  His lovely fiance Ritu Sharma is too talented to speak of, but I’ll be trying to when I write a post on her soon (yes — I’m writing a post about this woman because she completely and thoroughly blew me away as a brilliant, effective, life problem-solver. She even solved a complex, crusty problem I had before I even had it. Honestly. She’s that kind of good.
3. The Content: The advantage of a niche topic is, well, you can drill down to make sure you’re reaching the needs of the audience. The Social Media for Non-Profits conference is just such an example of this. I can’t tell you the number of attendees who went out of the way to tell me

So I’ll be going again, you can count on that.