the reflexions insider

Now that the Web 2.0 Expo is over I’ve begrudgingly returned to the east coast. For a New Yorker in the web development business, the bay area is like a mythical forbidden city where technology people are a kind of ruling elite. There’s no doubt that New York is a hotbed of web innovation, but web companies are still small potatoes compared to the other industries that call New York home: finance, fashion, art, music, publishing (and you thought Rodney Dangerfield had a hard time getting respect).

Coming from New York the energy around the valley is palpable. The cities themselves are woven into the history and culture of this industry. Names like Cupertino and Mountain View conjure up glowing corporate logos. And then there are the legendary hotspots like San Jose, Palo Alto, San Mateo.

At the Web 2.0 Expo you could almost sense the 6- and 7-figure deals taking shape in the bustling corridors of the Moscone Center. The San Francisco Chronicle had a special column dedicated to the event in the Business section. Web engineers, social media gurus, user experience consultants, web 2.0 designers. All there. And all using this new, amorphous language that seems to spout from Tim O’Reilly like beat poetry.

Just a few of the terms that [...]

Image by wwphotos via Flickr

Tuesday’s keynote was given by Eric Schmidt, CEO and Chairman of Google, Chairman of Novell, etc, etc. There were two items of note: 1) the announcement by Schmidt that Google has just released a presentation application to their office suite, and 2) the fact that Schmidt’s appearance came on the heels of the announcement by Microsoft and AT&T that they will ask federal regulators to challenge Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for 3-odd billion dollars.

Incidentally, while booth size shouldn’t always be the measure of the relative importance of a company at a trade show, it was telling that Microsoft’s booth was in the “low rent” section and looked like the marketing department had paid for the trip by ransacking their couch for spare change (See the photo I snapped to the right. If you squint your eyes you can kind of make out the Microsoft booth among all of the people who are looking elsewhere). [...]

Image by gkpsecretariat via Flickr

This is a thought-provoking if somewhat pretentious video that was played as an introduction to the keynotes by Tim O’Reilly and Jeff Bezos on Monday, April 16. I captured this on my Casio Exilim so apologies if it’s a little jumpy in spots: