Debbie Landa and the Dealmaker Media team have brought GrowConf back to Vancouver for the third year in a row. There have been activities all week long, and it's not even over yet.

What have you enjoyed about this year's edition? What are some experiences that you've had? Is there anyone or anything that you've missed? What would you want to be different next year?

Deb + Co. put on a fantastic event -- and I didn't even make it to the conference floor ;). I'm sure it was a huge PITA to coordinate GrowLab's Demo Day with GrowConf, but the net effect was to make both events dramatically better, because the quality + breadth of the people in the room was so high, and the (often) multi-day time commitment gave folks the breathing room to have more + different conversations than if they'd swept into town for one purpose only and headed straight for the airport.

Really enjoyed the GrowTalks but unfortunately couldn't make the time for both days. The Lean + UX talk was one of my favorites.

Launch@Grow was awesome, really well done, great location, loved the food trucks. I enjoyed going around to all the GrowLab startups and checking them all out.

All in all, will definitely attend again next year.

I really want to congratulate everybody that helped in making this amazing event happen. I have been to quite a few similar events in germany, but nothing so far has even come close to the quality of GrowConf 2012.

I found the the hosted talks with Mark and Brian especially insightful, since I like the Q&A Format. Maybe a quick Q&A after each speaker utilizing twitter for the questions, might be an idea.

I only hope that Jeremy quickly recovers from his STARTUP SMACKDOWN ;-)

GrowTalks were an awesome idea and really informative and enjoyable. I learned a lot that day, validate some assumptions and clarified the next steps I should take in my own business.

GrowConf was a really well organized event and quite inspiring. It was less process oriented than GrowTalks, but as a lot of people put it, 'you can't beat the networking'. You can connect, reconnect and rekindle a relationship that will help move you forward in business and in life. You can get inspired, encouraged and renew your commitments to yourself, your team and your business.

GrowConf, I am a convert and I am looking forward to next year!

I have never experienced anything quite like GROWConf, #GOAT, GrowTalks, parties and all! An incredible opportunity to meet startups from other cities and learn about their experiences. AND THE BEST PART, I got to meet many of the startup hero's that have influenced my life dramatically and even better, a chance to share a drink or two. Talk about relationships...this conference is easily time well spent!

Better yet, I brought my wife and she's definitely not a techie. Still, she walked away saying 'wow...talk about quality. From the venue to the people. The energy was incredible. Happy to come back with you for round2'

Count us in for 2013! In fact, count Seattle in as well. Next year, plan to see our numbers easily 'grow' ;-)

So I've had a few weeks to decompress and reflect on all that is GROW. There is no question in my mind that it is the most active week in the Vancouver Startup scene and reflects extremely well on all of us. Kudos to Debbie and for building something from nothing! This is the highest praise I can offer.

This year the week was nicely filled out with more more activity, which is great. Highlights for me included:
- Geeks on a Train which was awesome for interacting with people from out of town (from what I could tell I was the only one from Vancouver, though Calgary had a contingent from Decoder/Beaucoo)
- GrowLab demo days: great presentations, great interactions, etc.

Which brings me to: "what could make it better"? The GROW day itself is structured around a single stream of speakers typical of other conferences in the "sage on the stage" style. (I am a huge fan of participant driven events/unconferences, so have a natural bias against this sort of thing)

Every one I spoke with was completely stoked about the networking and connections going on. However, I only heard one person rave about the "content" (no one complained, so I'm not suggesting it's bad per se).

My thought: if the value is in connecting, can't we just do that?

I don't understand GROW's business model and maybe the content is critical to the marketing and building hype around these things. But if it's not, I think there's opportunity here.

Maybe Chris Devore's approach of not hitting the conference floor should be the MO to adopt.