I’m currently attending the XIIth European Conference on Creativity and Innovation. It’s much less academic than most of the conferences I go to, which is a refreshing change. I ran into a problem yesterday, though, which got me thinking.

I gave my workshop on the first day. About 20 people came to it, and they were terrific. The asked questions, they challenged ideas, and they raised many interesting points leading to some excellent discussion. It’s one of the best conference experiences that I’ve had.

The problem came the next day, when I was trying to decide what sessions to attend myself. Several of the people that came to my session were presenting themselves, and since they had been so great during my talk, I felt that I owed them my time and attention in return. However, with 20 people at my talk, it has been impossible to repay all of them.

And I realized that this is always the case.

When I think of the list of people that have helped me get to where I am today, I realize that the list is unbelievably huge. And in many cases, I can’t repay these people in kind.

I can’t go to the conference presentation from every person that attends mine. I can’t retweet blog posts from everyone that tweets my posts. I can’t even read the blog posts of all the people that read mine.

This is why I feel like I have to share. I can’t pay everyone back with time, or attention, or a tweet. So I hope that in writing things here, and in sharing ideas, I can at least give something back in a different way.

To everyone that has helped me out – thank you!

I’ll try to keep up my end of the relationship by giving away as much as I can here. I hope that works.