EightBlack.

I have to be careful what I say here because the O’Reilly folks were kind enough to grant me a Media Pass this year. So I can’t really launch into a tirade against the man, otherwise the only Web 2.0 event I’ll ever be invited to in the future is the Web 2.0 event scheduled for Uzbekistan in 2056.

Or something like that.

Yet, everytime I see Tim O’Reilly present, it looks like he just flew in the same clothes, halfway round the world while consuming 3 bottles of vodka. In economy. And on Aeroflot.

He comes across as this dishevelled, mad professor.

Billy Connolly calls it “the wind-swept and interesting” look. Anyway.

There is, however, nothing wind swept about O’Reilly the businessman. And this event is clearly no fluke. The logistics and planning commence 6 months out from the day it starts. And safe to say 10,000 people (conference attendees as well as Expo exhibitors) pass through their turnstiles.

They have the marketing of Web 2.0 down to a fine art. And to the casual observer, everything runs like clockwork. Which is no mean feat when you deal with this many people, this many ego’s and a venue the size and scale of Moscone (over 2 million square feet of building with in excess of 700,000 square feet of actual conference space).

O’Reilly is never short on opinion. Especially about where the web is headed. He’s even credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0″. Industry experts refer to the “O’Reilly Radar” - which is O’Reilly’s knack for predicting where the industry is heading.

As an outsider looking in, I don’t think O’Reilly is the typically driven Silicon Valley businessman, looking for the next big score. This article about him in Wired, talked about O’Reilly the passionate father, husband, son and student. And while I’ve never met the man, I have a deeper respect for what he stands for and what he’s achieved. The article, while 3 years old, is well worth the read.

What then, was the essence of his Opening Address at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo?

Simply this.

That the internet is becoming the platform. That the real heart of Web 2.0 is collective intelligence, harnessing network effects to build applications that get better the more people use them.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft released this week their version of the platform and their admission that they want to dominate “the cloud” space. Called Microsoft “Live Mesh”. I’ll have to admit though - as soon as the Product Manager came on stage and started getting nearly excited as Steve Ballmer does when Google’s earnings come out, I switched off. Entirely. I’m also a converted serial Mac user, so nothing Redmond says or does really registers.

Tim O’Reilly is clearly one of the industry’s pioneers, one of it’s main thought leaders. The more I think of it, he is the “Yoda” of the valley. And people listen.

The video is well worth watching.

Subscribe to more posts like this

Related Posts:

Add to | | | View blog reactions

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under People, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.