If you don't know Planningness, here's the short version: it's two days of provocative sessions led by industry brains, followed by hands-on audience activities. Learning, then doing. This year it was held simultaneously in Brooklyn and Denver.

During my two days in Denver, certain themes emerged: ideas I'll probably be pre-occupied with over the next few months and years.

(This is meant as a Cliff's Notes view - check out the individual presentations as they're posted here to get the full story.)

So, recurring ideas:

Driving groups to participate is an increasingly crucial skill
Definitely the most pervasive topic at Planningness, popping up across many sessions. Mike Arauz (Undercurrent) put it most poignantly: "We will be judged by our ability to engage networks."

Len Kendall (The3six5 project) offered his learnings on creating participation - with the frank reminder that because we do this in the service of brands, we're starting from a disadvantage. And John Winsor took us through his ongoing adventure building Victors & Spoils, as he braves change and turns the disruptive power of crowdsourcing on our own industry.

Agencies need more scientists
I'm not talking about the usual marketing pseudo-science, shallow research and half-baked venn diagrams. This is real science, the stuff that thrilled you as an 8-year-old. A session by Craig Elston and Ethan Decker of Integer Group showed us to how to hack people (well, nudge them at least) using behavioral economics and cognitive psychology. Meanwhile, Stamen showed off their gorgeously-geeky, math-and-data-driven take on storytelling.

Planning is splintering into many wildly-differing roles
The aftermath of digital is conjuring an endless variety of alternate reality versions of both planners and strategists: from specialists to generalists, from crowd-wranglers to curators and beyond. And in my chats with the folks sitting around me I'd say that the audience was made up of people who do very different jobs under the same (couple of) titles.

Whether this is a good thing or a danger, I don't know yet.

We're at our best when we embrace change
We are an industry in the midst of change - technological, cultural and economic. Which brings me back to the closing Q&A by John Winsor - one person who seems entirely at home in the chaos - during which he answered the audience, over and over: "That's a good question. I don't know. We're gonna have to try it and see what happens."

In other words, it's a fun time to be doing this. Get excited and make things.