Why I’m THRILLED to be sponsoring #Mesh11

I’m at Mesh 2011, “Canada’s Web Conference” at The Allstream Centre in Toronto on Wednesday and Thursday May 25 and 26. I’ll be posting updates periodically over the course of the conference.

This is my 4th year at the Mesh conference for Fruition, but it’s Fruition’s first as a sponsor. And it’s about time.

Here’s why we decided to dive in deeper with our support for the conference:

Right now I’m sitting in the conference’s main ballroom listening to Rob Hyndman introduce Ron Deibert and his spiel on state control and surveillance. Next I’m heading off to hear Jesse Brown talk about how to “unsuck” the Internet in Canada and after that to a workshop on managing online communities.

And that diversity is the essence of what makes Mesh great and worth supporting.

It’s this country’s only place to get the full 360 degree view of what this whole Intertubes thing is all about. It’s about the Internet as a marketing platform, sure, and that’s important to me as a digital agency owner.

But it’s also about the Internet as a platform for social activism, and a driver of social change; it’s about the Internet as an entertainment and education medium; it’s about the Internet as a driver of business change. It’s about government, and law and crime. It’s about privacy and openness and connecting with others.

And those are all important to me as a human.

It’s so easy to get stuck in one’s own little slice of the online world. But Mesh reboots that view and broadens the perspective, to everyone’s benefit. For that I say “thank you” and “here’s my cheque”.