Web 2.0 Expo New York 2008 highlights

This past week, I had the honor of going to O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.  Overall, it was a great event that allowed me to connect with some of the great minds in the industry in addition to learning a lot.

Some highlights from the conference:

Tim O'Reilly's keynote -- as someone who is passionate about community first and foremost, O'Reilly's call to action for us to focus on what matters really hit home for me.  Community -- not limited to technology, is what brought me to Microsoft.  I think tech has a big role, but ultimately the measure of it's true worth is what does it mean to everyone else?  How does it solve the really big problems of facing the environment, global health, civic participation and so on?  Thank you, Tim for calling attention to what really matters.

Clay Shirky's keynote -- I've always appreciated Shirky's insights in bringing much needed depth and focus to looking at how community affects social interactions.  Looking at the so called information overload problem through the lens of broken filtering methods changes the conversation, in my mind, and helps us all focus on problems to tackle

Genevieve Bell's presentation -- Much like the keynotes by O'Reilly and Shirky, this session (and her abbreviated keynote) brings a different perspective to the Web2.0 space.  As an anthropologist for Intel, Bell brings rich insight and poignant questions for the future direction of how the internet impacts social interactions.  How this physically shapes our environment, and how it changes our experiences with technology and each other present many new challenges and opportunities for all of us.

Avinash Kaushik's presentation -- Focused on the topic of analytics, Kaushik gave a great overview of how we effectively measure and analyze what is really going on with the Web2.0 space.  Kaushik provided great insight, and gave a thoroughly entertaining presentation for a topic that can be quite dry at times.

Joshua Porter -- where to begin?  Porter is great!  A must read in my list of feeds, I appreciated the opportunity to attend both of his sessions, in addition to dialoguing with him on issues of reputation and recognition.  (thanks also to Bryce Glass for the clarification of your definition). 

Other highlights -- connecting with folks from all over.  Whether it was with folks from Etsy, Lithium, Cisco, Chile, or old colleagues it was great.  Additionally, New York has always been my kind of town and it's a great place for something like the Web2.0 expo.  Thanks to everyone involved!