W20: Initial Impressions I
can't believe it took me this long to get to O'Reilly's Web 2.0
Conference (officially the Expo this go around). Having worked in the
online space all my life (I was at Fidelity Investments for 9 years
prior to coming to Shared Insights), I've been to a lot of tech/online
conferences. I've had Web 2.0 on my list for a few years but never
quite made it.
Here I am.
The
official conference sessions just got started. My plan is to blog my
notes but I wanted to provide some context before I dove in head first.
As an interesting side note, Shared Insights put on the inaugural Community 2.0 Conference
last month in Las Vegas. The differences in the two conferences is
immediately apparent. That's not a commentary on either show -- just
the fact that they are night and day different. To compare and contrast:
C20 had 250 attendees/speakers. W20 looks to have 2,200 or so.
C20 was in Vegas at the hip/new Red Rock Hotel. W20 is at Moscone in SF.
C20 had three tracks. W20 has eight.
I
could go on but you get the picture. O'Reilly's Conference has hit the
big time. C20 is still niche but was much more intimate.
It will
be interesting to see how the quality of the sessions compare. I also
wonder how much access I'll get to the speakers/attendees (flipping
through the 2,100 attendees is a daunting task). What would be really
cool (and who knows, maybe this already exists) would be to have a tool
that allows me to compare my contact list to the attendees here so I
could see who I know.
Note: I love the fact that W20 has free
WiFi but there are so many people here using it, it's excruciatingly
slow. Not major but definitely annoying.
Note 2: It's sunny and
65 degrees here. Given the fact that I just left Boston (rainy, cold
and blustery), this is heaven. In nice weather, San Francisco is hands
down one of the most beautiful cities in the world!
Mon, Apr 16 2007