ON WEB 2.0 2006 CONFERENCE WRAP-UP

GOOD SHOW

Quite a few assessments on many blogs, of the Web 2.o Conference, er, sorry, "Summit",  in San Francisco to read this weekend, with this one by Richard MacManus being an example, as well as this one by Liz Gannes at GigaOm.  (Not to mention irreverent happenings like "Hacking Web 2.0" by First Round Capital, as Fred Wilson explains).

Both John Battelle, and an "under-the-weather-but-braving-through-it" Tim O'Reilly put on a great show, with a little help from the 60 or so team-mates.  Techmeme has a good summary of some of the blog posts as well.

I agree with Richard's observation that:

Last year there were a lot more developers and designers running around, this year the crowd was overwhelmingly from the media and business worlds.

Unlike Richard, I did like the presentations by the 13 or so new, startup companies at Web 2.0's "Launchpad" presentation, along with other startups in the demo hall like Hakia et al. 

Hakia in particular, emphasizes a point in my earlier post, that where there's a will, there'll be another startup trying to do search better, despite the almost in-formidable odds.

For me there was a bit of deja vu from the late nineties when almost every startup seemed to have one or more "media handlers" guiding the founders through a conference's VC, media, and opinion-maker constituency maze.  This year of course, the A-list bloggers were added to the mix of "courtees".

The business phase of Web 2.0 is in full swing, which is not as a bad a thing as is sometimes portrayed.

The technology presentation that provided the "Wow" moment for me was from Microsoft.  I agree with Robert Scoble when he observes:

"Gary Flake, head of Microsoft’s Live Labs, gave me a tour of Photosynth. It is simply the demo of the year. Certainly the coolest thing showed off this week at the Web 2.0 Summit."

Looking at what can be done with hundreds of digital photos algorithmically modeled in an "on-the-fly" virtual 3-D model of a real world locale, emphasizes that we're still in the Web 1.0 phase of the photo and video phase of Web 2.0. 

You can check out the demos yourself at the Microsoft Photosynth site.  A Windows PC and Internet Explorer browser (version 6 or 7) are required.

For those who eschew anything Microsoft, check it out despite your reservations.  At the very least, it's a glimpse into where a lot of this is headed regardless of who develops the technology first.  A point of inspiration, as it were.

Great job, Microsoft.

And a really good show, John and Tim. 

Onto Web 2.0 Expo, next year.

Comments

[Comedy King]

Even poor people like me (too broke to goto a summit) are creating Web20 applications to better the world (free apps), I made http://www.ImageGenerator.org for image designing online.

Eventually no one will ever have to install (installing on you computer has more security risks) or purchase software again. So long "BIG BOYS"! You can already get many free Operating Systems (Linux) that connect you to the internet to use these freebie tools.