Salzburg, Soccer and Sachertort

A lot of decent things came out of Edumedia 2008 this week in Salzburg. Ralf Appelt has posted a useful blog reporting on the highlights of the event, and Graham Attwell's team are cooking up a whole host of sounds and interviews from the conference for podcast. Adesigna's Flickr photos are particularly evocative (this picture of the river at night is simply beautiful). One of the most innovative aspects of the event for me was the introduction of the Twemes application to capture an aggregate of all the best snippets (Flickr photos, Delicious tags and Twitter posts) from the event. The Edumedia Twemes page has grown with a number of useful artefacts from the event. The Salzburg Tagit project was interesting to hear about, and it was great to finally meet up and have a few beers with the likes of Jay Cross and Marcus Specht.

Tell you what though, I'm glad I'm out of Salzburg with the Euro 2008 football tournament starting. The place was swarming with paramilitary and police yesterday as I took one final wander around. There are barricades everywhere around the fanzone and the place is thronging with people wearing flags, football shirts and ...yes... shaven heads.

Salzburg will be remembered by me for some good thought provoking presentations, plenty of constructive and challenging dialogue (I was interviewed, photographed and videod more times in two days than ever before - Mark Kramer even has a Qik video of me talking at coffee about social software) and some stunning Alpine scenery. I visited the bier garten and tried the Stiegel beer (accompanied with the eponymous frankfurters) and also sampled the Sachertort in a wonderful little cafe just off the main tourist drag. I even sat with some colleagues atop one of the hotels over looking the river at night, and looked over the city as it dazzled with a thousand lights below. All memorable. Ein Schon Stadt. I just hope it doesn't get wrecked by the footie boys....