Preparing For Web 2.0 Summit 2007.
Posted on October 14th, 2007 by Simon ChenThis coming week is arguably the most important gathering of the people actually driving the web, in real time. Organised by industry titans, John Battelle (left) and Tim O’Reilly (right), the US based Web 2.0 Summit is always a sellout. And by invitation only. No one is just quite sure how invitations are handed out but safe to say that the speaker line-up in itself is well worth the admission price of $3500.
(images courtesy Web 2.0 Summit)
I’ve been waiting for this event since I covered Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year. It’s my 10th trip to the US in 2007 and probably the most important. Someone asked me recently why I head to the US so much. The answer is simple - so our clients don’t have to.
I’ve got no problem admitting that most of the horsepower behind the web at this point in time is originating from the West Coast of the US. It’s not to say that there aren’t other places where the web isn’t being worked on, but if you want to try and tap into the pulse of 2.0, then you need to tap into the pulse of the VC market. Follow the money. It never lies.
The organisers behind the Summit have gathered an amazing 108 speakers (if my count is correct). The gig goes for 3 days at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco and the format is main speaker presentations followed by breakout sessions and workshops.
My only criticism of the Web Expo earlier this year is that audio and video recordings weren’t available from each day, nor the entire event. It seems silly because you obviously can’t attend every session you’d want to. More importantly, I reckon the organisers are leaving a lot of money on the table by not providing MP3’s or DVD’s.
Because of the media throng surrounding the event and the fact that the place will be overflowing with wireless, you’ll start to see blog coverage almost instantly. At the Web Summit, at each and every session you’d see the main technology bloggers and media guys all lined up against each side of the main auditorium, laptops plugged into whatever available power point was close by. Many were posting real time. It was cool. Way cool.
I don’t expect this weeks gig to be any different. Just with a few thousand less people.
Here’s some of the people I am dead keen to see, to watch and to listen to. I’ll be posting as “live” as I can, and if I’m allowed, I’ll be pushing my video camera into the faces of some hopefully important and interesting people, praying that I don’t get beaten by a security guard.
We’ll see what happens. Here’s my list - you can see the entire speaker lineup here and if there’s someone I’ve missed, drop me a line. For those of you attending, my Twitter details are (twitter.com/eightblack) or my US cell is 415.264.5593.
Standby. More to come.
People I’m Watching At Web 2.0
- Jay Adelson, CEO, Digg
- Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
- John Battelle, Chairman, Federated Media, Web 2.0 Chair, Author and Event Organiser
- James Bilefield, CEO, Openads (we’re working on an enhancement to Open Ads for a few of our clients, project is titled “TaguchiAds”. More later)
- Bruce Chizen, CEO, Adobe Systems Inc,
- Chris DeWolfe, CEO and Co-Founder, MySpace
- John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (John was one of the early investors of Google)
- Gary Flake, Live Labs, Microsoft
- Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble
- Jeff Huber, Vice President Engineering, Google (what this guy must know must be astonishing)
- Paul Kedrosky, Entrepreneur, VC and author “The Infectious Greed”
- Jim Lanzone, CEO, ASK.com
- Marissa Mayer, VP Search, Google
- Rupert Murdoch, Chairman & CEO News Corporation, Part Time Aussie
- Tim O’Reilly, CEO, O’Reilly Media
- Barney Pell, CEO & Founder, Powerset
- Ram Shriram, Partner, Sherpalo (regarded as one of the top 3 dealmakers in high tech by Forbes)
- Meg Whitman, CEO, eBay
- Evan Williams, Co-Founder, Twitter
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO & Founder, Facebook
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October 14th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Sounds like the place to be. I’m partly envious but I’m going to be in China and am curious to find out what I can about how all this Web 2.0 scene looks like from Beijing and Shanghai.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Des, I promise to keep you informed - although with your connections, you’d hardly need the info. We’ll touch base before Blogworld. Cheers mate.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Sounds awesome i wish i was going…the best way to keep ahead of the times is to be at that conference!
simply awesome, great speaker line up.
Adam
October 18th, 2007 at 9:52 am
[...] Simon Chen has a good summary of the next Web 2.0 summit and he mentioned that Openads very own CEO James Bilefield is just one of the speakers that he is going to see. http://blog.eightblack.com/2007/preparing-for-web-20-summit-2007/ [...]