Jonathan Brinley wrote:
> If my choices are (1) _optionally_ setting up an account with an
> organization I know and trust, or (2) being _required_ to create an
> account with a third party that I would rather have nothing to do
> with, I choose option 1.

I understand your concern.  On the other hand, there have already been 
50 people that you'll be attending the conference with that have chosen 
option #2 (ok, option #1 didn't exist yet, but still).

I don't know what other social networking tools (other than Facebook) 
might be planned for this conference but something that worked pretty 
well for the JA-SIG conference has been to publish a recommended tag 
(i.e. JASIGSpring2008) that should be used to take any photos taken on 
Flickr.

At a recent BarCamp I attended they made heavy use of Twitter with a 
specified hashtag so anyone could follow comments attendees were making 
about the during the conference.  That Barcamp was somewhat unique in 
that at least for part of it there was a simulataneous BarCamp in South 
Africa on the same topic.