BlogWorld 2010 was probably the most rewarding experience of my career. Being a part of this extraordinary team and helping to pull off such an important event is a rush I can’t even begin to describe. In the last few weeks before the event it was a little stressful as we did our best to make sure nothing and no one fell through the cracks. However, when show time dawned, I wasn’t stressed at all. Everyone asked if I was frantic, stressed or crazed, and I said “no” to them all. I might have had a couple of busy moments, but for the most part there was nothing to stress over. This is what happens when everyone works hard to ensure an event’s success. We had a couple of very small fires to put out, but no major episodes.

As I spoke with BlogWorld attendees, I joked that I was going to sleep late for the next few weeks and not surface for the next few months. The entire BlogWorld team fantasized about ending our work day at a decent hour or even taking a little vacation. Truthfully? Many of us took a couple of days off, but on Wednesday, a few days after BlogWorld, we were all back at work and having a Post Show Analysis or PSA meeting. As I’m the only one involved who lives on the East Coast, I was the only one who couldn’t attend the meeting in person. However with Skype it was the next best thing to being there.

I knew we’d discuss the speakers and the venue, but I had no idea of the laundry list of items we would go over. Rick and Dave are pros and they left no stone unturned. We discussed everything from schedules to food, from the bathrooms to the registration process. We talked about what went well, and what we’ll have to change for next year. There were a few specific areas, for example, keeping an accurate speaker roster (as speakers were added or dropped out) and making sure everyone made it to the schedules, signage and directories, that we have to do better for next year. There were other areas that we feel rocked. For example, we felt we had our best content ever this year.

So what are we doing now that BlogWorld is over? Well, we’re working on receiving and analyzing attendee feedback so we can better plan our next event. This means if you were at BlogWorld you’ll probably receive an email from us in the next week or so requesting you fill out a survey about BlogWorld, our speakers and sessions and your overall experience. We hope you’ll be honest with your assessment and that you won’t delete the survey before sending it to us. Without your feedback we can’t have an even better BlogWorld in 2011.

We’re also dealing with a ton of housekeeping. Just because BlogWorld’s over doesn’t mean we’re still not receiving massive amounts of email each day and they all deserve attention. Plus we’re just starting the early planning stages of BlogWorld 2011. If we want to continue to grow and get better, we have to plan early.

BlogWorld may be over, but we’re not resting on our laurels. The West Coast contingent is in the office every day and I’m working at home. We’re reading your blog posts and your Tweets and we’re so stoked that the majority of you truly dug BlogWorld ’10. We’re also reaching out to those of you who offered negative feedback to learn why your experience wasn’t positive and how we can fix it next year. For you, BlogWorld is over. For us, it never ends.

If you have any feedback on this year’s event or have suggestions on how we can raise the bar for BlogWorld please share in the comments.