The European Web 2.0 Expo came to a raucous and good-spirited close on Thursday with the official Web 2.0 Expo Euro After-Party, "LateCrunch", in no small part due to the delightfully incorrigible hosting from TechCrunch's Mike Butcher.
The party topped off a three day long conference which had the very broad goal of touching all aspects of the 2.0 movement such as business strategy, technical development, best processes, marketing and even social impact.
Attendees were mix of folks from every possible field: designers, managers, developers/hackers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and analysts to name a few.
With such an ambitious goal, diversity of audience and a three day limit, one could foresee (and unfortunately later confirm) that it was a challenge to organize.
Workshops, for those who wanted to get their hands dirty, were clustered into parallel streams into the first day. This meant that participants could only choose one morning and one afternoon workshop.
Sessions were packed tightly together on the second and third days with 15 minute breaks in between. This essentially left only the lunch break as a meaningful time where networking and discussion could take place (unless you were twittering and posting while tuned out of a current session). I found it a little a bit ironic that a 2.0 conference expounding the virtues of new dimensions of connection and interaction would leave me with the feeling of a lack of engagement and inter-personal communication. Thank goodness for the evening events where it was possible to mingle and have substantial conversations!
I can't say I was impressed by every session I attended, but a few interesting ones stick out:
Duane Nickull held a well prepared bootcamp workshop on Adobe Flex which clearly demonstrated the main attractions of the framework and which was also simply fun to try out.
A tip of the cap to Robert Goldberg and Ted Shelton who held the Pitch Camp on Tuesday. Although I was a bit peeved that they ran overtime and overlapped with Tim O'Reilly's keynote address, I think it was pretty gutsy to try to mobilize 12 teams plus audience into break-out sessions. It didn't run smooth like butter, but in the spirit of "Act, don't talk" I salute you.
Lee Bryant's Niche Online Social Networks session came across both inspiring and professional. Citing examples where low cost, grassroots web projects have made a large social impact, he expounded on the quote from Andy Hobsbawm of Green Thing, that "small is the new big".
A thought provoking statement from Bryant:
"Innovation is about finding good problems to solve, not about the cleverest solutions".
The Reactive Advertising session from Burt where they introduced their Copybox product was like the dessert which I wish I had had from lunch. Although perhaps not an epiphany for anyone already in the advertising business, the Gustav pair wove an entertaining and convincing story to back up their product.
And last but not least, I find it absolutely necessary to mention the Electricity 2.0 session from Tom Raftery. As the only session of the conference which could be described as completely dedicated to addressing a real world crisis, I can recommend to anyone who couldn't attend to check out the slides:
Thanks to the O'Reilly Media and TechWeb teams for their hard work in organizing the conference.
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