Greg Narain and I attended the iDate conference in Nice last week, as part of our Horde of Vandals tour of Europe. [Greg, are we going to make us t-shirts for the crew?]

The conference was only around 60-70 folks, but either because of that, or because of the particular mix of people, it was a great mixing bowl of networking. Old Friends (like Judith Meskill of the Social Software Blog, and Michael Jones of Userplane), and many new (like Sandra Williamson and Jim Houran of True, and Patrick Marshall of Thomas Services).

The real benefit of a conference in Nice is (as you can see) the food.

(photo courtesy of Yasu Nagaoka; more are found at iDate photos).

I gave a talk, entitled "Social Tools and The Third Space," which I enjoyed researching, and which I will be turning into a written piece in the next week. Uploading the powerpoint won't help much because a/ it was mostly pictures and me handwaving, and b/ the pictures are so dense that the powerpoint overwhelms our Moveable Type limits for upload. Stay tuned. Here's the abstract:

Web context is increasingly assuming the role of the 'third place' -- after work and home, as defined by Ray Oldenburg -- where the sense of community is created. As third place moves online and becomes third space, how will the technologies that we use to communicate shift to support a broader range of social interactions? What about the enhanced third place that new cell phone services are creating in Europe? What can we learn from online work communities and today's online affiliatory communities (like online dating) to intuit the third space of the near future, both internationally and in Europe? What other business models appear in the third space, aside from those we have already seen in social networking today?