I was just looking at some of the tweets around the hashtag #wit2011 and I saw this:

“3 words I’ve heard the most at #WIT2011 this week. Penetration, Mobile, Social. Succeed at all 3 & you’ll go far!!”

These are definitely some of the grooves Siew Hoon was thinking about with the theme this year, “Find Your Groove’. 

Interestingly, for me at least, I noticed that these hot topics – these grooves – mobile and Social Media seem to have taken on a new maturity.  I suppose one could say that they are now being ‘carefully considered’ by almost everyone including senior management when, perhaps just a year or two ago, they lay more in the domain of the early adopter / geek zone.  

It’s all serious now.  Deadly serious.

But that didn’t stop some healthy and fun debate.  And there were still those warning us not to rely too heavily on mobile and others still seemingly wary of Social Media and all that that entails.

The whole world of ‘Deals’ got mentioned a lot too and my take is that when people start reacting strongly to something it’s a sign of real disruption and the gnawing at the foundations of some of those institutions built on years of mutual back-slapping .  I’m not involved with having to secure revenue from rooms I own or sell those of others as my business so I have some luxury of distance from Groupon and the like but some of the banter feels a bit like coming from those who feel threatened.

I don’t think it’s too different from some of the underlying sentiment of Apple haters.  Watching others turn their backs on what traditionally forms your daily comfort zone is going to make people behave in that way.

One speaker even suggested that there would still be wide use of desktop PCs in 20 years‘ time.  I think that’s unlikely and we might all do better by thinking how we can make tomorrow different rather than thinking that it might look like today.  I know of at least one great man who’s been in the news lately who thought like that.

I’m already looking forward to next year and I hope to try and inspire Siew Hoon when it comes to a theme for next year.

I know that I echo her own thoughts when I say I hope everyone had a groovy and fun time.  WIT is all about a community and is bigger than just the last few days – a notion I shall be doing my best to communicate to the ICCA delegates next week in Leipzig.

I think if I can be as half as energetic and engaging as ‘you know who‘ I’ll have done pretty well.

See you next time.