Welcome to the end of December, the end of 2010. This is the time of year when we see plenty of “Top 10 of 2010” lists and summaries of the past year (along with a few predictions for the upcoming year). Yet in spite of the pundits and the headlines from national news outlets, I wanted to informally poll my friends and social networks to see how they’d headline the year.

Why? Despite the headlines and top stories, we tend to have our own filters and perspectives on what represents a whole year. 

So we posed the question in Mad Lib format: “2010 Was the Year of _____.” From our network, here are few of the results that came our way:

 “2010 Was the Year of the American Identity Crisis” – @tarynp

 “2010 Was the Year of the Lady Gaga Meat Dress and Tea Party Politicians (both over the top!)” – @theshiramiller

“2010 Was the Year of the Someone Else’s Life. (therefore, I call dibs on 2011!)” – @aparkour

 “2010 Was the Year of Writing, Social Media, and Mostly Good Times in a Bad Economy” – @georgiawebgurl

 “2010 Was the Year of the Social ‘Me’ versus ‘We’” – @alizasherman

“2010 Was the Year of the iPad (of course!)” – @eholtzclaw

 “2010 Was the Year of Blame” – @raidschmitt

“2010 Was the Year of Competing Rights” – @looking_glass

So what was the year to you?

Inspired by Mashable’s 100 Upcoming Social Media and Technology Conferences list, we cracked open our planners and decided where we could invest our time in learning this fall. We decided on a few national conferences, opted for a few marketing, technology, and PR meetings, but when we got to the topic of social media, we were nearly crushed with the options. While we’d like to go to BlogWorld and APPNation, we needed to consider just how much time we could spend out of the office and our carbon footprint (Jenny’s traveling to speak in Houston at IS Conference and in San Diego at LavaCon). To save on time, we considered only social media conferences and events in Atlanta. To our surprise, we found a dozen* (this post started as 12, but with your input, it’s now at 17) social media conferences and meetings in Atlanta happening before the calendar flips to the new year. What’d we find? Take a look:

 While we’re narrowing down our options, reviewing speakers, and the value we’d get for our time out of the office, tell us how you decide on what conferences to attend? If you are coming to any of these conferences or headed to Atlanta for the first time, let’s be social and connect while you’re here. (Know about a conference we missed? Send us an email and let us know.)

*Thanks to Scott Lockhart (@scott_regator) for sending us the info on Mashable’s Atlanta event on Sept. 30; to Lane Bailey for sending us info about REBarCamp on Oct. 1; to Brandy Nagel (@benang) for the info on TedxPeachtree; to Stephen Boyd for sharing more about the digital/social media track at the IABC conference.

 We knew this town was busy.