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Oct
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If you'd been at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week you would have had to be an industrial-grade-cynic to not feel that something is going on; that we're on the verge of something new and interesting. There was a buzz and energy that couldn't be explained merely by the abundant coffee and Red Bull.
The conference was a different kind of conference than I'm used to. Despite being heavy on PR and Marketing - the whole show seemed 'authentic'. The fairly intimate (aka crowded) workshops; discussion led by Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle seemed to cut through all the Web 2.0 hype and get to the core of what is happening on the Web today. My pre-conference expectations were of a hyped-up-internet-love-fest but what I saw was lot's of hard data and analysis and a pragmatic look at the Web today and in the future. OK, there was a bit of un-restrained hype (especially around the Launch Pad Workshop) - but that was totally acceptable and expected.
The presentation formats worked extremely well - 15 minute "Show Me", "High Order Bits", "From the Labs", UI Minutes and 6 minute product launches - I never got bored at any of the presentations and my poor tired brain is still trying to absorb everything that was thrown at me. The discussions seemed very authentic - John and Tim seemed to be OK letting them go wherever they went (this was especially true of Jonathan's conversation) which was way more valuable than a canned, scripted interview.
For me, the highlights of the show were the following :
- Marketing to a New Generation - Lisa Arthur, CMO of Akami, eta al. This was a profile of the Echo Boomers (the children of the Baby Boomers - 0-27 year olds). I'm just outside this ;). The echo-boomers are an interesting demographic as they have lots of disposable income - they're also the first generation to claim broadband as a birthright. It was very interesting to know how these people think, how they use technology and what there expectations are.
- Mary Meeker - a very quick profile of the Internet today - I blogged about this before with a link to the slides.
- Lunch - good networking - everyone I sat next to was pretty interesting (I hope I was too).
- What the Teens Want - they dragged 4 Teens up on stage to descibe how they use the Internet - this was incredibly interesting (I haven't been a teen for a while and my kids have a long way to go) - "pay for music ? - dude !!"
- Tom Barton - from Rackable Systems - who've done some pretty good business over the years building the internet infrastructure - he presented some amazing stats. re. the size of the internet - I can't find his slides but one stat. stood out - The Google uses the about the same power as a town of 35,000 people - the best estimate is that they have between 100,000 and 200,000 servers.
This was my first Web 2.0 - overall it was a good show - well planed, great content and great speakers; my only grumbles are 1) that the Workshops were too compressed - physically - they should've have run them twice; and 2) I need the slide decks - my poor tired brain didn't absorb everything.
My other grumble - and this is probably aimed at Sun (not O'Reilly Media) is that Sun (the company that built out Web 1.0) were largely absent. Jonathan did attend and lead a great interview but other than that - nothing. Which is a real shame - Sun is well positioned to be a real leader in the next build-out of the web - our products are clearly meeting the market need (ie. blazingly fast, low power consumption hardware, open-source, innovative pricing). One quote I heard really bought home Sun's leadership position - I think it was Tim or John who said (paraphrasing) - "Sun has been saying the Network is the Computer for years - well it turns out they were right" - yup Sun gets it - I just hope we can convince more people that we do; and that we have the products to back it up.
Update - you should also check out Claire's notes - somehow we completely managed not to meet (despite the huge array of personal communication technology at our disposal) - which means I still don't have an Open Solaris T-shirt (hint, hint, referer tax).
Update 2 - Gary Zellerbach (fellow Sun Blogger) has also posted a great summary of the conference - "Musings on the Web 2.0 conference"
Technorati Tags : Web2Con, GlassFish
