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86 people responded to my survey about running a conference about blogging, newsletters and the ‘web of words’. Would have like to get 100 but not a bad response all told.

67 people said they would be interested in this sort of event, 13 gave a firm maybe and 7 said they wouldn’t be interested at all (as such I wonder why they clicked the link in the first place — but I appreciate the honesty!)

As for location Bristol got 36 votes (and a couple of second choices) and London got 28. Manchester came third and then Cardiff and Oxford had a couple of votes each.

I’m still in a bit of a quandary — clearly there is some interest in Bristol but I’m not sure if it would really extend much beyond those 30 or 40 people and I’ve been stung badly locally by no shows at events and while it would be harder personally to do something in London I have a feeling it could generate more interest there. Need to think on that. I suspect the ease of finding an actual venue for the event will be a major factor (also I have a vague thought about trying to sync the event with something bigger — say the Mozilla Festival?)

The preference for a format was clearer with 40 people going for the 20 minute-ish TED (without the sanctimony and ego) style talks. There was some love for an unconference as well but not sure how that would work here. Maybe next time (if there is a next time!)

There we a bunch of suggestions for speakers. Many I knew and was already considering, a bunch of really interesting people I’d not come across and am now following and a few massive long shots either due to ‘fame’ or geography (going to take a pretty generous sponsor to fly people in from Australia!).

An amazing 16 people have suggested they might be up for helping run the event — and not all of them are people I know personally which is amazing! I’ll be setting up a Google Group in due time to see what needs doing and who can help with what.

I’ve had one and a half offers of sponsorship already and a couple of people offer to speak so I guess one way or another this is going to happen.

Watch this space for more updates!